


While Her Lips Are Still Red

by 13letters



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: (he's also just at parties for the dessert table), Alternate Setting - Period Drama, Angst, Astrology, F/M, God Bless the 1750s, Happy Ending, Henry is so In Love, Love Story, Metaphors, Parallels, Pining, Pink Roses, PotC: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Romance, Sexism, Shakespeare, Will loves Finessing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 11:13:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11080380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: Summer will continue for weeks, yet isn't it simultaneously the end of all things? Henry is gone without another word, reigns in his hands and his eyes up to the latched window above the garden's enclave. Pink roses full and abundant; he remembers the laced subtext, the kindred lapse of two people meeting by accident, perhaps, or by something else entirely.It's the moments, after all, that measure the wealth of life and the substance of it. However fleeting, isn't there always the end and the beginning -- the prologue, the first few chapters, the resolution, the confession, the first kiss, the first argument, theendeven if it isn't happy, the understanding that love is always on the brink of death, too, waits so quietly in the night for courage to make of lovers what honesty does for trust:hope?Love.Unclaimed and almost unwarranted -- the last either of them expected, the first apology. The distinctbeforeandafter, the tale as all lovers go.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callico](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callico/gifts), [Nyxzia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxzia/gifts).



"No," he hurries to explain to the man his father warned him about getting to know, to the man whose face is living validation of the truth that aches. The suffering that is so heartbreakingly apparent in this instant of fear, the second of a realization that was once upon eighteen years ago and the end of a story that proved some love just to lose.

How life is always so on the brink of death, so waiting, _waiting_ for souls who've fallen too profoundly and too carelessly into passion.

With just -- just one kiss. And she. She didn't wake for minutes.

"We were only walking," he says, straining to keep his voice calm. He's addressing a man afraid, he has to remember, a terrified, stricken father who doesn't know him like Carina does. Not really. He isn't his papa.

"Walkin' outside?" Hector asks, only his voice booms like thunder, like -- like _God_ , he's pacing over the ornate rug heavily.

The art on the walls shakes and tremors, the floor creaks at having its bones stretched like it's been so long since its foundation has felt any attention, any love.

"Naturally, sir, outside," he affirms. "I accompanied her on a walk past the bridge over Shell Creek."

"And she collapsed? Young man," he begins, tired yet so resigned, "the hills have steep inclines."

"The terrain was smooth, I assure you," Henry interrupts. So measured, his polite smile is more of a taunting frown. If this is overprotection, then it's unwarranted. Carina is singular. She's the most independent woman he's ever met.

"The sun was so warm today. What if she overheated? Describe her conditions before she collapsed," he orders with the same strained tone. "Was she weak? Lightheaded? Had she gone pale in pallor?"

"Sir," she. She wasn't any of that. She was no warning but her perpetual tone of indecisive argument, quips and barbs and laughter so sweet.

Sweeter than pink roses, than her rosy lips and the careful way she let herself take his arm as they strolled, yes, but as far as safety and propriety and his chivalry has kept, "Sir," he repeats, somehow still so quizzical. "No. Nothing. She was fine up until the moment, I swear."

"Fine," Hector Barbossa rasps, mocking. Just not unkindly even if his laugh is bitter and hurt. "She was fine, you say?"

"Yes, sir," Henry placates.

"She was speakin' clearly?" As soon as he's worked himself calm enough to sit across from Henry in this beige parlor, nerves have him up and pacing again. From a separate room, a faraway clock chimes thrice, his wooden leg thinks over the marble.

"When she could breathe, yes," he clarifies. "I'm not trying to be arrogant, sir."

"Speak simply."

"I don't mean to bridge propriety or speak boldly, sir. It was quite chaste, I assure you, our discussion until she -- that is." God forbid, he won't smile now even _if_ he can still hear Carina's soft laughter when she opened up her eyes to him and the grand blue sky overhead. Pressed her hand to her forehead like a silly maiden and murmured, _oh, my goodness_ , so sweetly that she was this perfect case of dramatic irony, the joke that is him so in love with her.

"Well?" Hector insists impatiently.

"I kissed her. Before she fainted," Henry amends, clearing his throat. And counting to seven. And feeling his neck burn, _oh_ , it really ought to have happened in a setting more proper, with her and her effects on him and his intentions made directly to her father first. "She had stopped breathing. Momentarily, I mean, and then simply fell into my arms. She didn't wake for minutes, though she seemed all right when she did."

Hector makes no move to speak or to resume pacing; he's fractured still and shocked to quiet. His expression is otherwise unreadable, as stoic as Henry's, so he continues promptly, talks his foot into his mouth, sure. "She voiced her consent to the kiss. I wouldn't have breached her form without it, I promise."

"Did she consent before or after?" he grimaces like he's threatening. So obtuse, he pulls his golden pocket-watch from his jacket. It's for the inscription, though, not the time, so _faith_. Patience. What did she always say about loving and living?

"During the kiss," Henry states after an awkward, lengthy moment. He doesn't fold under the weight of his gaze, just clenches his jaw and remembers the slightest press of her fingers through his, the glimpse of forever so tactile and cohesive, "Mister Barbossa," he starts, inhaling calmly.

"You can leave," Hector decides. He's suddenly so -- so _almost_ morose, indescribable grief that he just can't comprehend when the rest of the world beckons like it's the hold of destiny, makes a moment out of the seconds that twist and join, counter fate in beseeching hope --

"Wait, Mister Barbossa, just one more moment of your time."

"No. I'm sure my daughter is grateful you assisted her; however, there's nothing more you need to say to address or rectify her situation."

"What situation?" Henry interrupts in a huff. "Excuse me, but I'm sure your daughter would accept my proposal of marriage, too, if you would permit me enough time to ask for her hand."

"No," Hector repeats, and _Christ_ , this isn't what he wanted. "I'm afraid she wouldn't."

"I respectfully disagree." Henry half-grimaces, then rises from the cushioned settee, buttons the clasps on his lapel. He doesn't clench his jaw or raise his voice, but that look like asinine, "Asking permission was a formal courtesy, sir," he says. He reasons that -- that this doesn't mattter, being accepted wouldn't when she'll have him and does daily, has him enraptured by her every word. "A courtesy I didn't think you'd be ungracious enough to refuse."

"Don't antagonize me, sir," Hector threatens, weathered face scowling.

"I've made my intentions to her clear. If she says _I will_ when I propose, then I doubt anything you would say to advise her against the engagement would matter." She's strong-willed.

"You think she would spurn me?" Hector wonders. Though it wouldn't be surprising, had not Margaret done the same. "Ask a Protestant priest to marry her without my blessing?"

"I think she loves me," Henry states slowly. "And myself her. Why would anything else matter?"

" _She collapsed_!" The day was too excitable; she needs quiet and peace and no suitors, no, not until she's better,

"She was startled. I wouldn't call the experience a rare one. She was _fine_ if slightly stunned. It was harmless."

And that.. that's when Hector just _won't_ , not today. "I tell you again, sir," because it's everything so tired and too sad and weighing down his heart this afternoon. "Leave us today. Please. She needs rest --"

"I'll call on her in the morning to see if she's well," Henry tells him, remembering his manners enough to bow stiffly, eyes down. "You couldn't deny me that, knowing my heart in the matter."

"The next morning," Hector bargains. Only, he's less fierceful and unbiddenly apologetic.

"I could join you both for supper tomorrow instead."

"Leave, boy," he sighs. "Give your parents my regards."

His sigh carries to the window pane, to the snort of Henry's graying steed held by the stablehand. It's as morose as the sun is high overhead.

Summer will continue for weeks, yet isn't it simultaneously the end of all things? Henry is gone without another word, reigns in his hands and his eyes up to the latched window above the garden's enclave. Pink roses full and abundant; he remembers the laced subtext, the kindred lapse of two people meeting by accident, perhaps, or by something else entirely.

It's the moments, after all, that measure the wealth of life and the substance of it. However fleeting, isn't there always the end and the beginning -- the prologue, the first few chapters, the resolution, the confession, the first kiss, the first argument, the _end_ even if it isn't happy, the understanding that love is always on the brink of death, too, waits so quietly in the night for courage to make of lovers what honesty does for trust: _hope_?

Love.

Unclaimed and almost unwarranted -- the last either of them expected, the first apology. The distinct _before_ and _after_ , the tale as all lovers go.

\- -- - -- -

Before, the first time they meet, he's unconscious and delirious, feverish, cold.

She's helping in the ways women are expected to act if able: a nurse to the sick and the weary, a maid to tend to wounds the best she can, to listen to the lost and the foreign, the ones who cry out for God if there is such an embodiment of divinity, for their mamas if hope seems lost, for another chance if permissible -- an outbreak of the influenza, and a German spoke his dying words to her only last week; pneumonia.

It's going to take this boy, the physician says, and being so close to the sick will take her, her father begrudges, but in that long-suffering, somewhat distant, endeared tone that sees the life she could have had instead of this one. He can't fault her or blame her, and in fact, he came with her once just to watch how she spends some of her time, how this girl could be so good, but when a sick fellow from the town over asked him to read the Holy Scripture, his laugh echoed familiarly through the stone walls and wooden boards.

Dear heavens.

She wrings out a lukewarm rag, though, and presses it to this young man's forehead, and he won't die, she thinks.

She isn't sure why she's so certain or why life seems so inevitable with him when life is always on the brink of death, but she's got this instinctual feeling that won't leave her be as she watches him fret in his sleep.

And then nearly seizes up all at once. He wakes gasping and wide-eyed, sweaty and reeking like the sick tend to, yet when he looks at her, it's as if he doesn't see her at all.

"Hello," she tries, really rather amicably. Figures, the hour his mother's stepped away to bring fresh flowers to his bedside in the physician's patient room, he wakes. Mostly. "Could you tell me if you know where you are? How you're feeling? What your name is, sir?"

She loses count of how many times he blinks before he smiles in this rugged way that proves he's gone mad. When he stares at her cap first, and then gives a second too long to gazing at her mouth before meeting his eyes, he manages the words, "Henry Turner," before he coughs himself into a stupor.

After that, he falls back to sleep as quickly as he woke, so she goes to the doctor to see if he can't offer any herbs to soothe his throat. Tea, after all, has more healing properties than prayer, she's sure. And goodness, she'd know.

\- -- - -- -

The next she sees him, he's lively and he's loud, he's gesturing eloquently with one hand to emphasize the exciting story he's regaling others with. A story about chivalry or honor, perhaps -- something daring and uncouth, a tale that makes the boys her age double over and laugh, the young men at either of his sides snicker and snort in obvious amusement.

One gentlemen pats him on the shoulder in good cheer, white buttoned glove crisp against the dark navy color of his suit.

Another passes a small flask to him -- amusement that shouldn't be at this party -- but it's so subtle, the color blooming in his cheeks in keen camaraderie when he lifts the liquor to his mouth. Pretends to swallow and then coughs to seal his secret like a wide, animated gesticulation. While they laugh at his burn and declare him a good lad, invite him to join their party for cigars in the billiard room soon, _yes_ , this is the highlight of a coming out ball for most amiable gentlemen.

A young lady's match is likely already decided by the masculine influence upon her livelihood, so here where almanacs predict the foretelling of the apocalypse and the end of the world based on astronomic design. The turn of a century and the beginning of a new era, her papa smiled and patted her hand and declared that no, _treasure. There's no reason to worry. Has the sun burned all this time just to dim in your lifetime? I think not,_ he assured her, _ships continue to sail on the sea_ , he spoke, but not before sending her off to bed with prayers, to the maid that had her gown for this evening already airing, to the praise that the highest of society could revel in knowing the world wouldn't end before Grace Marian could find a husband. Fuck's sake.

Crystal chandeliers and threads of gold that shimmer in her peaches and cream colored gown, the curls in her hair, the soft notes of the piano accenting everyone's festivities and backdropping the hushed chatter of gossiping ladies and scheming parents, rowdy men who marvel at their own cleverness instead of humoring a lady to dance, his eyes passing over hers silently for but a moment.

An entire room away and then nothing at all; it's been this way for as long as she can remember, she and her father leave formal gatherings after the early festivities and the feast.

\- -- - -- -

Carina, she -- she wasn't born to this world, or maybe she was. Her earliest memory is of her head in the heavens, her papa carrying her on his shoulders through the garden so she might catch fireflies like her story book's fairy dust, like the stars in the sky that twinkle and shine just for her, her papa says, _the brightest star in the sky_.

Like her mama believed with her last breath, _you're all that good in the world, Carina, my darling_ , though it isn't like she'll ever know just how much she was loved, how her mama sang to her rounded belly while her papa rubbed her feet, traced over her freckles sweetly like they were constellations.

When the doctor tried to urge her papa to take her infant form away so her mama could rest in that lyrical symbol of peace, the permanent ellipse that's death coming in so softly during the night, quiet as Margaret's final word.

Hector forbid the doctor from keeping the babe from her mama, insisted that she must be allowed to stay with her mother until the last or he'd kill him where he stood; she wasn't too young to see devastation she wouldn't remember.

She was days old, not enough to see the peace beyond the tragedy, the love that would have dedicated her mother's every action to her daughter had God been gracious enough to let her live.

Carina remembers the feel of the scratchy lace collar of her nightgown, the sound of her father weeping. She remembers being a little girl and not understanding the finality in the resting place and the flowers she picked from the garden for the headstone.

She remembers once, so acutely, asking her father when Mama would wake up and if she could bring more flowers in from the garden so she could see them arranged so prettily for her, and Hector who could scarcely breathe since the world had upturned in seconds, he hadn't known what to say or how to explain to his darling girl the true meaning of life in regards to death -- the threads of date like their family's new tapestry, each lifeline entwined yet able to be cut.

Like the stems of flowers, like the pitying gaze of the housekeeper who said, "Come now, miss, the Lady would love flowers," as she led Carina to the hall to help fasten the buttons on her plum colored coat so she wouldn't catch worse of a chill -- _sick_ , they said, Hector feared as he shut himself into his room to breathe, to remember how to live whole enough for three souls.

Sometimes he still doubts he had made the right choice in staying to care for his blood, but others, he's content life led him to land, to a girl who strikes a look similar to her mother.

Carina remembers the quiet in her home, too, only she couldn't remember best by which parent's hand: her mama must have been gracious and lively, as used to be her father.

"Dear," began the sorrowful, kind voice of the housekeeper, Miss Addie, who held Carina's little girl hand in her old one in the garden. "It's winter time, see? Dear, all the flowers.. all the flowers have died."

And _that_ , that's when she thinks she began to understand. When her father took so long to pretend to smile anymore, when Carina began to grow up and see the world more for what it could be than what it was, the stars that dimmed but didn't die nearly so fast as petals fell. Shooting stars that never really fall from the sky at all.

\- -- - -- -

That night, the one where they first for him and twice for her meet and she isn't thinking that she wants a husband, she's thinking how she doesn't want to die, the clock chimes eleven and there's just under an hour for the world to rise again in routine and the habit of each day's consistency.

Time is shorting young lovers the opportunity to spirit away in the air of a new beginning to reign in the new year with a stolen, promised kiss -- cheers of gaiety through each parlor and the ballroom, porous excitement seeping into each heart and brightening them all in the candles' shining light.

It's a fire that casts her face in warmth, though, heat concentrated so warmly in the Whitfield's library. Soft flames giving the entire room the atmosphere of homeliness and comfort in juxtaposition to the cheery, forced air of the merry-makers just outside the hall, it's a coward's escape, but she's not one for dancing, anyways, never had the feet for it, her papa placated with an odd twinkle in his eye, _sea legs_.

She hasn't the grace or the heart. She's not one made for the smooth lines and the elegance, the smile that simpers in society. She happens to be sweet enough for social grandeur, however -- the result of a girl who grew up too quickly, who makes the choice daily to soften her harsh views into a picture of understanding. Not timid or hindered, granted, but the way she's began to see life as this fragile, purposeful thing, too --

"Excuse me," she hears.

And she starts, turning to the cautious, partial bow of a man with his head inclined towards her, _him_ lingering in the doorway feet from where she stands.

"I didn't mean to startle you," he says gently, worriedly, like she's such a delicate little thing.

"Rest assured, you didn't."

"Which is why I spoke, so you'd be aware of my presence," he reasons, smiling with a shy sort of confidence that makes her want to roll her eyes. "I'll be but an instant," he assures her.

Wordlessly, he holds up the leather-bound volume he's carrying, indicates it towards the shelves.

"You'll stay on that side of the room, I hope," she says.

"I wouldn't dream of breaching the filing system by doing so. It wouldn't be fair to the book."

"It's inanimate."

"It belongs near where you're standing. May I?" he asks, all deep, deep eyes almost impossibly brown.

She just scrunches up her nose. His long legs take up the whole of the library he carefully kept between them, regardless, since he edges polite a yard away from her, glances back to her standing in front of the fire in her pretty peach dress before setting the tone to its proper classification, and alright.

He doesn't intend the words to be as rude as they are, really, but he can't very well take them back when they're good and said, "I didn't see you dance once throughout the whole evening."

"Pardon?" she affronts, frowning in this way more surprised than insulted.

"There were numerous gentlemen without anyone to dance with," he hums.

Remarkable observation skills, clearly. Heavens. "I don't recall seeing you dance with anyone, sir," she observes quite gracefully actually -- so poised and polite.

"That isn't true. I danced with my mum. And with the lady of the evening," he says, just vague enough to not betray his disregard.

"Well. She does want to marry before she's eighteen, so," she says, really quite tactical.

"Oh," he almost laughs, "no, thank you."

"That was rather severe, sir."

"I mean no disrespect."

"She isn't here to protect her name, anyways," she shrugs, so unladylike as she closes the book in her hands, finally, catches his eye and then his frown.

"Her brother, you mean."

"No." She can't help but sigh a bit at how simple-minded he is. "Your slight was against her. She would speak against you for it."

"Slight? That's hardly fair. For not wanting to marry the woman?"

"Well," she simpers.

" _Well_ ," he agrees, and there's the grin that's only a smidgen blinding, the one that carried his mouth through feverish words to her voice once. "Why are you hiding in here, miss?"

"I'm certainly not hiding, sir."

"I couldn't fault you. That," he says, gesturing politely to the dark-colored book in her hands, "was a compelling read."

"You -- you've read it?" she wants to know, looking at him just a little differently now. Like someone of a like mind, someone who --

"Of course," he starts, smiling the same second her father enters the library and calls her name.

"Carina, the carriage is ready."

"Yes," she reasons quickly, looking from him to the book in her hands to Henry. "I'll just put this back."

"You're by the fire," he observes, gravely. "Did you have a chill?"

"No," she lies, because not really. Isn't it an improvement that she can feel cold, anyways? The book was one of navigational charts, one she'll miss, so there just off-center of the library, Henry almost frowning to see her go, "Good-bye," she bids him, quickly nodding in a slight bow. "Henry."

"Wait," he asks like he's pleading, a misshapen, begged-for miracle that she's paused when she can hear her papa half down the corridor by now. "Miss..?"

"Carina," she _almost_ doesn't say, glancing to where his arm is suspended in air like he was about to reach for her. "Barbossa."

"Miss Barbossa, I would ask you to dance the next we meet," he tells her.

Heavens, she doesn't let that catch her breath. No, thank you. "I would decline," she says politely, waiting to hate him for how he'll inevitably frown.

Only, he doesn't. Granted, he doesn't look all the more delighted, either. "Alright," he murmurs. "Then I do hope to meet you again, miss."

All of the intensity in his tone, it's water under the bridge or over the dam; her polite smile is this guarded thing that he doesn't see intriguing yet, only pretty and thoughtful since this is still the _before_ , the sudden start he gives when he realizes he never gave her his own name.

\- -- - -- -

After, they'll really end just as they began, over what ought to have been a deathbed.

But that's neither here nor there, not when she's fair skin and sweeter breaths, the slow way she moved into his arms and the careful way he held her.

The way she laughed in the quiet, enthralled way she does when she's perfectly serious, he knows, when she told him pointedly that this wasn't about him at all, so he ought not be flattered. It was getting a little too difficult for her to breathe in the rigidity of the laces shrinking her sides together, so if he'd just loosen them, just a breath, " _Carina_ ," he whispered as he swept her hair over her shoulder.

Pressed his trembling hand against her straight, set back, felt her inhale this sharp, slow breath that had everything to with the effects of him on her own life, the incomprehensible feeling that love sometimes just ebbs and flows like time drifting so slowly, washing over them in a feeling so raw.

Oh, heavens.

"Oh, Henry," she said.


	2. two

_During_ , it's the sound that draws her to her window, first: quiet, soft humming carrying so beautifully over the spring breeze and beyond the delicate lace of her curtains.

The sun shines patterns on the wall so intricate against the sheer fabric, catches rays that curl in her dark hair, "Are you here to see me?" she wonders in a rather curious way, pointed way, words drifting down and down. She's such a slight snob, though, that her curiosity sounds condescending, that her amusement, oh, no.

Past the bright ivy vine that joins the gardens below to him -- him who's kneeling in a bed of pink roses, who doesn't quite startle at being caught, not _really_.

She'll venture that his surprise is handsome, at least; his quiet, pleased smile is handsome despite how slight he looks as he shields his eyes from the sun. Like she's the intruder here and not him, him kneeling in a flower bed and stemming pink roses from the earth, him who glances forward to the wide bay doors first, then up to the clean white of the house to her. _Her_ looking down on him from these three levels, soft blue sleeves flaring just so as another lilt of wind drifts the scent of flora up.

He's standing within seconds then, instantly hat-in-hand and bowing despite her elevation, grinning up to her so brightly under the great, open sky, "I didn't know you would be home," he calls. "I might have greeted you properly, had I known."

"Would you have asked before stealing the roses?" she wants to know, leaning a bit down.

"They're not stolen yet," he clarifies, charming and smooth.

"You've mutilated them from the earth."

"I haven't actually taken them anywhere yet," he points out. "I could argue the point in a courtroom."

"Theft is theft," she chastises, crinkling up her nose at him. Just, it's so soft-hearted, the edges of her smile so faint; she's always had a soft spot for the flowers, and the dead stay dead, yes, but the stubborn. "Are they for a good cause?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are they for a young woman?" she repeats really rather tactlessly.

Only, she can't say why that gives him pause. "Would you inquire that if I had picked some apples from the tree instead?"

"Maybe if they were the green ones," she shrugs, folding her hands on the sill in front of her.

"Why not the red? The color of love," he reasons, "the fruit."

"An apple?" Heavens, she would have guessed a pomegranate.

"You knew me," he says then. He takes a step nearer to the siding of her father's home, wishes she might come down but won't ask yet. If there is a cautionary tale that's a love story written of a man who stole flowers from a garden, then the story isn't the one of Rapunzel and not of Persephone, surely. "That night. In the library."

"Our parents are dear friends," she embellishes, mostly for his sake.

"And I've seen you how many times?"

"Well," she says. Her voice edges so quiet that he has to raise his face even more to hear. "I usually remain indoors."

"Even on a day as fine as today, madam? You could resist the sun?"

"And the company, I'm afraid."

"Oh," he laughs, this thing that's really quite brilliant. "That isn't fair."

"Is the truth usually?"

"How did you know me so familiarly?" he asks again, gesturing up towards her window with the flowers in his hand. "I would have remembered meeting you formally."

"We did meet as children," she reminds him.

"Have you any memory of the occasion?"

"Not really," she frowns. Regardless, the chapter would begin the same. One of them too ill to remember, "It doesn't much matter," she reasons.

"You speak with such certainty," he realizes like he -- he could be remembering; time is fickle, after all, and if he's starting to recognize the way a soul starts to want, how hearts clench involuntarily and make more of mere acquaintances than the promise of a love incandescent. "I can't know for sure," he's saying, rubbing at the back of his neck in a way far too fetching for biceps, "but you might speak with more conviction than anyone I've ever met."

"Please," she scoffs. "I can't help it if no one else has any gumption."

"I suppose not. Would you like to accompany me on a walk?"

"Excuse me?"

"I've yet to deliver these roses, you see."

"You still think they're yours," she observes somewhat rigidly.

"They _are_ for a woman," he amends. "Isn't that a sufficient excuse?"

It _could_ be, she thinks. Nonetheless, she won't tell him that he's rather selfish in his justification. That she's supposed to stay inside, she won't admit that either. "Will we be away long?"

"That depends, Miss Carina."

"On what?"

"Whether or not you stay for tea," he smiles, squinting just a bit since the sun's already risen higher than it was when he'd crossed the garden's gate; it's never latched well, besides, but if this is gravity. If this is inexplicable, contrived serendipity redundant.

"Well, I can't do that," she reasons, her spine straightening like uppity instinct.

"Why ever not?" he laughs. "Miss Carina."

"Sir."

"Just quick pleasantries, then," he bargains. And there it is, tactic permission almost so subtle, his grandfather was a politician, after all, "When you decline the inevitable invitation to stay for dinner, I'll dissuade my mother from acting too disappointed."

"How gracious," she says, monotone.

"Was that a refusal, madam?"

"Oh," she sighs. In a matter of seconds, her lace curtains are fluttering closed, she'll pretend she isn't giving her reflection a cursory glance. "I'll just fetch my shawl."

\- -- - -- -

Really, blame it on the next December, blame it on how whenever he's with her, he's finally looked like there's nothing else to search for, nothing to find.

This month is salty sea air and his strong will to leave his trade to join the Royal Navy, perhaps, what would she think?

"Are you -- are you asking my permission?" she almost laughs because he suddenly looks so peevish, so angry that he's all defined brows and refined bone structure.

"I'm asking your _opinion_ , dear."

"Well, goodness," she murmurs, because when she considers the shadows of that life, one year or two, months where she's the housewife or betrothed from home, curating letters and penning missives, missing him as he sails the seas and rises high as the tide in ambition and rank. (Likely without her; it'd just be his life as this month has also featured a day where she couldn't stop coughing and felt as if her ribs were shattering, broken glass, the fragments of the pitcher her papa dropped in his quick gait to keep her standing), _oh_ , "I think," she says more strongly, because she won't lie to him, not about anything as direct as this. "That you wouldn't be happy sailing under so many superiors. And _dear_ \--"

"Don't patronize me."

"-- are you truly that nationalistic?"

"Excuse me?"

"I don't know," she mutters. It's one of her daily lies. "You'd be away months."

"I would, wouldn't I? Would you dread that terribly?"

"Don't carry on expecting compliments, Henry Turner," she threatens. "Heavens know you're already too full of yourself."

"If I'd be away," he says, ignoring the slight because she hates him; she doesn't -- she loves him; she _does_ , but hearts can be such secret things, "you'd be raising the children on your own."

"Child," she amends hastily, all she can do to not sputter and startle at his boldness. "One child. That's it."

It makes him grin at her lazily. Her voice always raises this well-to-do, know-it-all pitch when she's flustered. When so much of her is red: rosy cheeks, her lips the color of wine, the fact he's always had a taste for strawberries. "I've always envisioned a large family, you know."

"I do know," she scolds. "Now quit being so bold when discussing the future."

"Is nine kids too many?" he wonders, letting their fingers brush just barely for a second, something electric and igniting, ecliptic. "Perhaps seven instead."

"You'll have to start courting someone else, sir," she grimaces. She does reach out to gently take hold of his arm, though, in the chill of winter that has him trying not to shiver, her practically flushing from the warmth. "Or at the least, you'll have to properly propose at some time. The sting of rejection should have you reconsider your priorities."

"In all seriousness, Carina," he says, covering her hand on his arm with his gloved one. "I wouldn't dream of going where you couldn't. Alright?"

December has him learning to forgive just as December has her learning to walk away with bare footprints in the snow and every single time she's ever considered changing her mind. The first he's kept his word and had it matter more than trust or integrity: _life_ , one with her, that what he's meant.

He's always meant her, but still the things she won't tell him like the shooting stars that never fall from the sky at all. She follows the constellations like maps like letters, the words he pens to her with a steady hand, how she practically giggles when she refers to Orion as her gentleman caller, gifts from suitors like the constellation of a lyre, strings pulled just as the tendonae of hearts being teased.

December is almost her telling him the truth, making honesty more than the effects of her loneliness, but it's mostly quiet fireside discussions, the stories he tells and the inflection that brightens all of her form when she tells him of something she finds brilliant or intriguing.

December is the meticulous effort with which she dips her quill into ink and starts drawing him more than constellations and stars and a mark of the gods, a moon she pens along the inside of his wrist which.. which was minutes of her hand in his hand. The slow, thoughtless way he brushed his thumb along the spine of her palm, began to trace the lifelines that could see them entwined.

"I'll have this etched into my skin permanently," he swore when she had finished, when less than half the moon was drawn onto his skin with such a dark contrast against the tan of his arm that it could have been real, the easy way they existed with each other might have been real.

"You're ridiculous," she quipped.

Just, when she went to swat at him lightly, he caught her wrist and brought her hand to his mouth, pressed a kiss against her knuckles so tenderly that she couldn't breathe, _oh_.

"You didn't," Will gaped when Henry joined him in the parlor, a plate of yesterday's apple pie already half-finished from just the short walk from the kitchens to here.

"I probably did," he mumbled, mouth full but his hand held up to cover the offense. Yes, Elizabeth raised him right.

"My son, tattooed. First your hair --"

"It isn't half as long as mum makes it out to be," he gripes, because his own father. God.

"What's next, a piercing?"

"Just the one ear," he teases. "How was your day?"

"Tiring," Will admits.

One day as Henry was growing up, Will had stopped bothering to pretend he wasn't utterly exhausted upon arriving home. That, or Henry had begun to realize just how much his father loved him. He won't ever know for sure what fortune awaited his father when he was a lowly blacksmith, nor what kept him from his wife's bedside when Henry was born and Jack Sparrow, enemy, friend, brother, had been the third set of hands to ever hold him instead.

"You're working too hard, papa."

"And you," Will says, not the least bit begrudgingly. A shipyard isn't a life at sea. "There's a _C_ drawn onto your wrist, son."

"It's a crescent moon," Henry defends, as that's what she had said as she explained to him the lunar cycles in correlation to the sea's tides. "Would you like to hear Carina's thoughts on lunar patterns?"

"Not tonight."

"But it's truly quite fascinating; she --"

\- -- - -- -

His mother had influences and connections if joining the Navy would have been something he truly wanted by the age of twelve, more of a siren call, less of an outraged attempt to defend the country that had spurned so many, yes, but showed them just what it meant to rise, too.

Nothing would have been out of his reach should he ever have wanted it -- Will was always too lenient in purchases of penny candy they'd share by the edge of the docks, too animated and dramatic with stories at bedtime. The amount of times Will would coddle his son, tuck him into bed with a kiss and a _see you in the morning_ so Henry would laugh and then Will would laugh, would count at least an hour until bare, little feet crept down the hall to rest between him and Elizabeth.

Henry had grown up loved, but that he grew up -- that's the most important.

On his fifth birthday, Weatherby Swann had given him an engraved silver pocket watch that would carry him into adulthood with punctuality and finery. He was still a Swann but also a Turner and so carried the legacy of both. When Jack Sparrow had arrived as soon as night fell and blew out the candle on Henry's cake before he could, there was laughter as there always was before the best present by far: a navigational chart with stars penned up above, a serpent lying just under the stenciled water, lines of longitude bisecting the latitude, "With this, you'll always be able to find your way, boy," he had said wisely.

While something in Will's chest gave out just a bit, while at five years old, Henry might have learned what it was to want something so much. The liberty or the longing of the sea, salty wind and trinkets from abroad, well, sailing wasn't nearly as interesting when his papa did it as opposed to Jack's stories about it.

The unaccustomed and unintentional gift of cartography, though, as his mama was teaching him letters before she and Will made the decision that the boy did want a tutor, that give it thirteen years, and an enraptured love of learning would lead him to a degree and a library and a borrowed book and one girl in a peach-colored dress.

It isn't as if he knew time was running out even then, yet it felt like it.

Maybe that's why when he received a letter of acceptance to a school that had everything to do with his maternal-side grandfather, he told his mama that he wasn't accepted.

As she simpered and threatened to write on his behalf, prevented by only his father's convincing, Will was the only one who seemed to guess the truth, him and Uncle Jack.

\- -- - -- -

"She wants a tutor," Hector announced, once upon seven years before when he wasn't as guarded as he is now. Then, Carina didn't show any symptoms of being sick.

"Which respectable man would willingly teach a woman?" Weatherby tutted while Elizabeth left no pretense about rolling her eyes.

It just grated Barbossa's nerves. He had already heard the same; it didn't seem to matter how much wealth he had, how well he provided for his most cherished gold, his daughter, since when he went to inquire, he heard more and worse.

The feminine mind was too delicate to learn algebra or.. or -- sciences and the like. She shouldn't concern herself with an education, not when she was so sweet and so pretty and could marry soon. Besides, women were too weak-willed. They hadn't the discipline for advanced studies, or so this young man with carrot-top hair had sneered at him.

When he had gone to present the news to Carina, all of ten years old and looking like she might cry if he couldn't help her (all her mother in that, but the dubiety was all his 'cause his kin's a fecking liar, she is, she'd kill to protect every book he brought her, so.)

And as this was when he had two good legs instead of one, he was able to present the news to her primly, kneeling so they might be eye to eye and face each other as equals. He, at least, has never valued her as anything less. "I wasn't able to find a school or a tutor for you," he honestly had to say, her disappointment just enough to gut him where he knelt. "Treasure, they don't figure a lady should be expanding her mind. 'Course, there are lots of finishing schools that awful woman with the eye --"

" _Papa_."

"-- recommended. But we don't need that, do we?" he wondered, 'cause this girl. His daughter. It wasn't that she turned up her nose to think of spending hours perfecting needlepoint or the actions of a caring housewife. It just wasn't what she wanted. And he wasn't about to dissuade her since his life became hers the day she was born.

"They wouldn't teach me maths," she persisted like he still needed convincing. He's watched her teach herself what she calls _basic_ algebra long enough to hear her passionate speeches for the thralls of knowledge completely. "The entire history of the world. Composition, papa."

"I'll see what I can do," he swore, so that's what goaded him into asking Elizabeth Swann, her with the connections he would ne'er possess despite the fact that  _he_ hadn't wed a penniless blacksmith, thanks.

No one had ever asked if he and Margaret were married when Carina was born -- when he settled on Godforsaken land and tried to build a home out of mortar and loneliness that at the least would never be abandonment. Maybe just everyone already knew, but he's never cared for social intricacies either. Not until her.

"Where's William?" he asked politely, declining Elizabeth's offer to sit.

"He's working," she smiled. Which is nothing to complain about, not in this life.

"Your spawn?"

"My son," she corrected, raising both her brows. "Henry."

He gestured vaguely. "That's right. How's he?"

"He's fine," she answered. Like a mother who'd spend the next four hours detailing each accomplishment or thought her son ever had, she does this little shift on the settee that shows her attention's far gone; her voice raises in pitch. "Just yesterday, he went with Will to his shop. You'd be impressed by the pendant he helped create, I swear it."

"I'm sure."

"Barbossa."

"He seems to be an accomplished boy."

"And your girl?" Elizabeth pressed gently. "I've only seen her at church services. How is Carina?"

"She wants a tutor," he said, just stopping the pleasantries right there. "Everyone I've talked to, Elizabeth. They don't want to educate a woman."

"No, I suppose not," she frowned. "Our constitutions are too delicate."

"Not hers."

"I could speak to Henry's tutor," she offered tentatively. While she's been a fierce guardian for her son, though, never doubt it, Hector's protected his daughter like iron. Or gold. "If it could be arranged that they could study together --"

"No. No," he interrupted, "that wouldn't be necessary."

"She could benefit from a friend her age."

"She has friends," he drawled. "A chorus of silly girls, none of them worth much neither."

"I could ask my father to find a suitable tutor for her, then," she frowns still. "Perhaps she would benefit from a female presence in her life."

"She's happy," he bristled. Instantly all defense, it didn't really help when Elizabeth stood, too.

"I'm not suggesting otherwise. But a governess might educate her. She's never known a mother, Hector."

Except she has, really, just -- just it's been him: father, mother, friend, confidant, each.

"You haven't brought her by in a while," she continued. "I'm sure Henry wouldn't mind the company."

"Elizabeth," he interrupted again, teeth set impatiently. "Could you just make an appointment with your father. She wants this," he said.

\- -- - -- -

Maybe he just never noticed before; he had no explanation as to why one of his mum's friends kept his life so reclusive and quiet: an honest country life with horses and a cow, chickens, pink roses blooming just under a high window.

He had been there before, he knew -- recognized Mister Hector in a crowd, heard old stories from his papa about a life at sea and the souls he met. When he became (presumably) a widower, however, or how or why, he didn't know, never asked his parents about because it's terrible, it really is. How comforting and guilt-ridden the thought _at least it wasn't one of us_ is since Elizabeth could be strong enough for her and Henry.

But Will, while he likes to imagine he could (like his own father liked to imagine he might), to love Elizabeth was to breathe, so losing her might have been devastation so profound he might never recover. Child or not.

And Henry couldn't hold against him the hypothetical when he'll understand it someday, too, how it feels to love someone so much, so maybe he was never truly looking for Carina in ballrooms or church pews or at the market. Every potential interaction was stilted by the impending _what if_ that saw them apart anyways.

He supposes that he's seen her but never brought himself to think much -- social regard, his status and hers, the once he arrived to a sermon late and there she was sitting down next to his mum in that closed-off pew he always thought was to keep sinners from escaping, so did he make more of it than he ought to? A month away from home, and he'd been replaced.

He now knows he heard her talking at one point, once inside the bookshop where he figured she was angry because he didn't know her enough to recognize the hurt and the offense, the passion that set her voice like fire at being denied a book about astrology while the clerk honestly kept trying to get her to take a book of sewing patterns instead, Christ.

He was up before he really thought about it, just wanted them both to shut it so he could finish looking over his father's financial papers, alright -- their voices were carrying up the stairs.

"I'll take that book," is what he said with no other plan in mind.

"You will not!" she erupted, so good Lord, he didn't even look at her.

The bookkeep started to pass him the book with Galileo on the title, he could see it then, but he just shook his head, sucked his teeth. "The other one. I like to sew. Please," he affirmed before just taking it and marching back up those stairs to work in peace.

Their lives in summary, moments of collision that weren't. Of course he noticed her; she was a pretty girl, but him, looking through Mill's shop window the instant she had been, their gazes meeting for all of four seconds before she agitatedly looked away, held her bolt of white fabric closer to her chest.

He might have been compelled to offer to carry her purchases for her when her mouth did that annoyed, beautiful thing, but alas.

They did know of the other, had interacted mostly as children and mostly after she had been born. Elizabeth loved her, at least, loved to hold the baby girl she and Will wouldn't have hesitated to keep if Hector just -- if he.

If he had been a weaker man.

Just years passed like days, and then minutes in agony, his mother always fancied that to love someone was to see them, through a fever, through delirium, through dreams that woke him shaking, practically screaming, he _did_ wake.

He wasn't that surprised, not really, that she was there with him when he opened eyes. That she had been half-holding onto his hand, looking at him with so much worry when his eyes opened, that he told her his name mostly so she wouldn't forget this occasion should he, _sleep_.

She pressed that cold towel to his forehead.

He looked for her when he woke again, too, perhaps ready to say something gallant like _you saved me_ , but life really is an _almost_.


	3. three

Henry is eight when he has his first drink. 

He had the brilliant and impulsive idea to run away from home and try his hand at piracy, so he -- he _did_. He packed the essentials: his stuffed Mister Rabbit, a loaf of bread, a dictionary, his pocket watch, the thin book his papa would read to him before bed about a Kraken. It was to be Henry against the world, and his mum would keep the note he'd scribbled for her and left waiting on her nightstand by her hairbrush. 

Eventually it'll make her laugh -- does now all the more harder when she thinks of how she first cried onto the paper, read his promise of returning with a vast store of treasure for them all. He vowed to become the Pirate King. He said he'd do all of this by the end of the week, too. 

As he trudged through the dark streets he could recount as fact that his father walked past daily to reach the harbor, he thought about where he'd find a ship and crew and ate half of his bread. Running away is hungry business, always has been -- so naturally, he stopped in the first place that seemed to hold the slightest promise. 

That it happened to be called _Anchor Your Port_ now makes eighteen year old Henry cringe, but then, it at least sounded right even if it reeked of smoke and rum, powder and a veil of perfume. 

Maybe the girls thought he belonged to one of them so just let him be, ducking under a serving tray, pausing briefly to eye a game of dice before he clambered atop a barstool and stared at the man behind the counter bravely. 

"You twelve?"

"Yes," Henry lied. And instantly felt bad and bit his lip, was beginning to lose his courage and feel hunger and thirst and homesick, he really couldn't do it, he _couldn't_ , "No. But I will be someday."

"Not if your mother catches you here," said Jack, lightly whacking the boy on the back of the head. 

"Uncle Jack!"

"No," winced Jack, making a face, "no. _Captain_ , lad. How long will we do this?"

"That's why I'm here," Henry said quickly. And dear Lord, those round brown eyes just staring at Jack, gazing at him in a way all too familiar. "I want to be a captain. I want to be at sea, Uncle Jack."

"Sound decision."

"I'm going to be a pirate," he admitted, pulling on Jack's sleeve a bit, his voice all lowered in a child's conspiracy. "What do you think of it?"

"You're too young to know," Jack told him, just not in a patronizing way. "I support your decision. If your decision is supported by your parents only; I can't have them looking to me to blame when your mind is so impressionable. Young. Convinced. We could set sail by dawn," he states blandly, like it's genuinely nothing at all. 

But oh, the poor, sweet child. He believes every word so deeply that Jack almost feels something akin to guilt. "Could we really?"

"We could. Of course, the seasickness would be horrid," he wagered. 

"I've been on a boat before. I could handle it."

"Scurvy. Scurvy can kill, lad. First your teeth fall out, so you'd -- you'd look like this," Jack says, making the appropriate face to emphasize. His teeth hidden by the stretch of his lips, he can't _not_ laugh when Henry makes the same face back at him. "Henry, that won't be the worst yet."

"I don't need teeth," Henry decides then and there. Just let him handle the sails or stand by the mast. 

"But you'll need your eyes. Consider it: never again to never see a woman? Fair skin, beauty, grace, what have you? Scurvy takes the eyes, young Henry. I'm sorry to say, but it is true."

"I don't care about girls," Henry mumbles, yawning into his hand. "I'm going to be a pirate."

"But when you get scurvy --"

"If," Henry interrupted, damned know-it-all. 

"No, _no_ ," Jack said. "When. When you get scurvy and lose your eyes, how," he pauses, waiting for the child to get all entranced and wide-eyed, "how will you _read_?"

"Uncle Jack," Henry whispered.

"Yes," he said resolutely. He was unable to keep from tacking on the word _son_ after it, though, leaned close as he was to hear Henry's revelation. 

"I've just realized I don't want to be a pirate."

"No?" His voice was all mock-surprise, and now Henry had the heart to look like he was disappointing Jack, what the hell. This boy. "But a pirate's life, it's the best existence there is."

"I can't do it," Henry sighed disappointedly. "It's for the best."

"Sound decision, really."

"I really didn't want to lose my teeth, Uncle Jack."

"I've a story about that. A fellow I knew. But that's not for now, Henry. You ever tasted rum?"

"No," he replied honestly. 

"'Course you haven't. Look at who your relations are to! We won't let that put us off. Let's not tell your mum, aye?"

Henry just kinda stared into the stein Jack slid in front of him. "I tell my mother everything, sir."

"That's good. You're so honest. So morally upright. But why not wait a few years to tell her you've drank some rum? Preferably after I'm dead."

"But Uncle Jack, you'll never die," Henry said with all the conviction of a sure little boy. "Right? And why aren't there any boats here?"

\- -- - -- -

By the time she's twelve, time is like a full stop ahead, a fleeting paradox that sees gold spun from straw to satin, time to memories. 

She knows better than to ask her papa about her mama now, about once upon eleven years before and the life the shared together. 

When he explained to her little girl soul that Margaret was dead by exhausting each euphemism and religious sentiment (which she was too stubborn to believe at even six years old), he was at his wit's end by her incessant questions. Days before her seventh birthday, he had snapped at her more harshly than he's sure he's meant to, the first he ever had to raise his voice against her, _you don't have a mother, and that's the end of that_ as she started to cry, as. As he did, too, because he had sworn to Margaret that he couldn't raise a baby with just himself. He couldn't be responsible for a living, breathing thing. 

It was never supposed to be in the cards for him, wasn't ever guaranteed or given. Now, it all changed; he changed, rather, because he was too daft to consider he would actually fall in love with that babe wrapped in one of his old shirts, held close to her mama's chest. 

There was nothing else to do but _stay_ which is what he learned -- Carina turned nine, and he observed in passing what he pretended to not to notice but had been staring at for months, "Your face is the same as hers was. When you read," he clarified, and not much made him nervous, but his daughter looking at him like he had more of the world to offer than the pages in her books or this house a walk away from the sea, oh. The sweet, mortal pain. 

"She did the thing with her brows that you do," he continued, God forbid it, almost hesitant. "She enjoyed books, as well, treasure."

She turned ten, and he let her read a letter Margaret had scripted to him, one fairly innocent in content and _with love_ scrawled neatly at the bottom: even margins, swirling uppercase letters, annoyance she can feel in the words she reads again and again, "She was cross with you," she noted. And before she could really help herself, she sighed all disappointed-like. "What did you do to make her angry, papa? Really?"

"Excuse me," he quipped, "but I did absolutely nothing. Besides set sail away and try to kiss her _fare the well_."

"She wouldn't let you?"

"Not the first few times," he admitted honestly. It is the truth just without the details, the forbidden fruit like a sweet green apple, salt in her hair, gulls on the wind. Not the first few times, no, but then she did. 

Then Carina turned eleven, and she was in bed for the better part of a week. The doctor wrote it off as nothing but the changing of the seasons; nothing to do with her immune system, nothing to do with her lungs' strength. Just a cold, really, red nose and all, but still Hector doted, still Hector fret. 

"She was a handful of a woman," is how Jack Sparrow described her when she begged, when.. when he couldn't deny her anything either, not the children that are the future, that could practically be his with how easily he makes them smile and laugh and 'fess up their dreams without any fear of disregard (he lets her call him _uncle_ , actually, maybe just since he likes Barbossa better than Turner, but alas. He loves both children immeasurably. They make him regret in the most profound way.)

So when he sat with her, let the cat in from outside only because she asked and because Hector said not to, he let the fluffball's purring and the fire's roaring lull him to domesticity, to the valuable realization that he couldn't keep anything from her should she ask. "She was a handful of a woman," he repeated. As with all his storytelling, he knows just when to let suspense or excitement waver his voice. "Two handfuls, I'd say."

"Uncle Jack!"

"I meant," he admonished, glowering at her with so much mirth, "that she was stubborn. Independent. Highly and attractively argumentative."

"She didn't love my papa," Carina said then. Just why, she suspected, she couldn't say. 

For all his jests about it, though, it might've actually tore his heart. "No, lass. I think she loved him very much. I couldn't explain why, however," he said, brows knit just to clarify, "that will have to stay between them."

"But she didn't love him right away. And he didn't love her right away, not in the right way, Uncle Jack."

"How would you know?" he accused lightly. "Does anyone love someone else right at the start? People are selfish, lass. People are blind, too. Your mother knew she didn't want to wed a gross, aging, articulate, pretentious pirate, so she didn't."

"Don't smile like that," she huffed. As if to spurn him, she clapped her hands so that the little calico kitten would plop from his chair to her bedside. _Fine_. "I wanted a happy story."

"I don't think anyone's told you," Jack began gravely, leaning forward a bit. His mock-serious face only made her roll her eyes. "Your mum died. You realize that must mean there was literally everything but a happy ending involved in your lineage."

"I know that!" she burst, so loud so against every horrid instinct, she wouldn't start to laugh. 

"They were overly fond of each other when you were being beget-by, if that's any consolation, dear."

"I imagine it helps a little."

And so quickly, he slapped his palm against his knee, waited for her to blow her nose before he told her. "He was going to have her become Misses Barbossa. I remember how nervous he was now. Poor fellow, love, he sweated buckets, like a true fish out of water." 

One who made port like making a home, started to consider it such when it came to Margaret.

"Would it have been a chapel wedding?" she asked him, her nose all crinkled up in distaste. 

"We'll never know, Carina. He would have asked her, had there been more time."

So she turns twelve, and time is like a full stop ahead, a fleeting paradox that sees gold spun from straw to satin, time to memories. 

She doesn't ask him because sometimes he offers up snippets of her like cursory compliments or customary questions about her day: the mundane effects of a life lived to fruition. 

She doesn't ask because she's been more aware of how much it pains him to remember, yet there's something he's sure to continuously do. Mention Margaret enough to keep her presence living and vibrant, though not at the expense of his daughter's own individuality.

\- -- - -- -

After Carina, life is really all the more prevalent as an _almost_.

Perhaps if she had truly known they were so pressed for time, she would have told Henry that she loved him more than once.

\- -- - -- -

"I really don't want to speak of it," she murmured. 

Him, he's given up all pretense of actually reading anything in this study, anything besides her expressions and her words _except_ for the novel in his lap -- the one about a knight and a lady and a dragon -- a distraction, since every thirteen minutes precisely. 

"How are we managing?" Barbossa asks from the perpetually open double-bay doors. 

Carina stopped answering him two hours ago, but Henry, he still answers politely in refined social grandeur. "Just well. Would you care for another summary about this last chapter? It was really quite clever, the phrasing."

"Henry, _honestly_ ," Carina snapped, peevish. Under her look of disappointment, Hector only tried to not feel proud. "Father, you need to desist."

"I don't mind," Henry excused courteously. Damned liar. He's so full of Elizabeth that Barbossa reasons he doesn't have to worry for his daughter at all with him. 

"And I don't mind. Next turn, I'll bring pastries."

"Heaven's sake."

"Thank you, sir. We'd appreciate it."

"Henry!" she chastised the second her father had made it at least half down the hall. "The clever phrasing? What would you told him? I doubt you even know the book's title --"

"-- I would have thought of something; that's my clever phrasing --"

"-- or the name of the main character! Heavens. I'd rather be in your home's parlor."

"With my mum sitting between us? _Leave room for the Lord_ ," he mimicked, "if only He was a female and half as meddlesome."

"She didn't stay the entire time," she excuses kindly. And unable to keep from smiling, even if she turns her face downward, lets her curls hide most of her face. "It was nice, being there."

"My da's home now. I can't imagine he'd be much better." Except Will is brilliant and not the least bit subtle, so y'know, he really does want grandchildren soon, so. What are her thoughts on discipline? Childrearing? Illiteracy? He'll want to know. "Your father is just appropriately concerned."

Although he owns not her or her body and has been made well aware -- she keeps him fairly progressive for the eighteenth century while piracy helped hinder his disregard, surely. 

"We could go for a walk," he suggests next, losing all pretense and snapping his book shut. "I could use the fresh air. And you, Carina."

"And me, what?" she wonders lightly, smoothing down the yellow pleats of her gown. "I could benefit from fresh air?" she asks. 

He slowly starts to nod. "And other stimulating forms of company, I'm sure. I won't press you," he swears, all his heart stuck to the roof of his mouth, this time sweeter than honey, _love_ : a metaphor stuck to his teeth. 

"I know. Though you suggested a chaperone, Henry."

"For propriety's sake."

"Propriety might do well to remember discretion," she murmurs, pointedly. 

And then just, the eye contact suddenly so poignant, it's not a decision so much as an understanding. She's up on her feet at once, wobbling slightly since she's been seated for too long, too stationary in her life, she thinks, with a deeper meaning she'll consider later when the stars are bright and the slight burn of his stubble against her palm will enhance the memory of the kiss he pressed against her skin. 

"You could meet my father officially," he suggests so quietly, only one step down the hall and then another. 

Rather breathlessly, she inhales a startled laugh. "I have met him. Many times over the course of a decade, you know."

"But not as a young lady expecting to court his son."

"Oh, please," she chided. "I warned you not to let Papa interrogate you. Did you listen?"

"He genuinely thought I had executed criminal offenses," he whispered. Poor soul, he was still full of so much disbelief. "And it was an _introduction_ , really. You and your words."

"My right leg, it was an introduction."

He nearly chokes. "Carina!"

Bless him, he's still sputtering when Hector sees them at the door and tries to not look too betrayed. Or resigned. 

Ask him, and he'll wager that Carina's been running her entire life, but that's the trick of time and perfection. It's the casualty of losing someone, so "Dear," he sighs. "Take the carriage. Don't walk."

"I wasn't going to," she admitted with this smile that's a little slow. "I won't be away long."

"We're only going to meet my father," Henry cut in to ease any apprehension. "You know it's a safe trip," he added helpfully, but her papa just oh-mercy'd and didn't quite glare at him but didn't quite anything else either.

"Soon," Carina promised gently, "I'll be home soon." And she patted his arm before taking Henry's, lingered just a little while more than necessary in the doorway because how sad he looked -- how it isn't just _after_ for him, it's the _during _where he's left alone in this grand house, too, to a life without her.__

__"Don't be too late."_ _

__"I won't be. I promise."_ _


	4. four

After her, and him, there are the metaphors he can see, the vast empty of a filled galaxy the perfect paradox.

He can wax and wane poetic about it, the after-effects of loving someone so much like sand pouring from an hourglass, white fine grains on a beach. Where time wanes so slowly, too, is pulled by the tide, though, bid by the waning gibbous moon high in the sky like the very notches of her rib bones under her skin. Spine like a cobbled road, freckles like constellations over navigational charts: the sanctuary of a body that's become home more than seas and stars, six miles past the docks.

Where pink roses are overrun with ivy, where the headstone. _God_.

Fistfuls of sand compared to the grace of white-washed windows, fingerprint smudges of his own discretion, he looks into the sea and wants to laugh. It's the stoicism of time. It's the once she came behind him, eyes set forward to an endless skyline, and asked him what he saw, what he wanted.

It's irony, but it's.. it's hurt like ash, like _she promised_ , and him. He was always too trusting, to quick to live life like it was love; he was always falling for the metaphors, the repetition of mistakes, _her_ , and the worn pages of books with broken spines. Stories that have barely begun while the shooting stars that brake the stratosphere, they aren't falling at all.

\- -- - -- -

The moon's barely risen, really; the sun's only been set for an hour and a half.

He knows which paved steps scuffle under his feet, though, which stones move and where the cobblestone turns to the gathering of pink roses under the high, curtained window. He knows the gate never latches properly, a byproduct of discretion and just one more way the world seems to encourage them like moths to a flame, all the lights shining in cascades of yellows and silvers. The lights glittering in the streets, the twinkle of stars overhead.

Truthfully, it's not the most subtle moment of his life when he picks out a rounded and smooth, small pebble from the stones, tosses it up to the fine glass of her window above.

It's like he can hear the creaks of the house's foundation, still, the way the floor wants to cave under her feet as her hesitant fingers draw back the heavy curtains so she can peer out and down. The slight way concern bridges her expression to one of unsureness to a look of fondness he could let overcome every single one of his thoughts.

When like that first day, she opens the window to gaze down at his enraptured face, candlelight in her hair this time instead of sunlight: different elements worthy of poetry and the connotation of beauty itself, the slight upturn of her mouth when she breathes his name in a voice so soft she's the promise of tomorrow already, " _Henry_. What on earth are you doing here?"

"Juliet," he calls quietly, having the audacity to bow before her like she won't cringe so judgmentally that she'll laugh open-mouthed, "I think I'm saving you."

"From what, precisely?" she teases, moving backwards just for an instant -- head turned back to her door just in case. Satisfied with not being found out, she clasps her hand under her chin and can't not let her smile brighten her face. "Henry. I preferred _Hamlet_."

"Even -- even with the ghost?" he wondered, honestly a little struck. "Ophelia."

"I'm not going to agree, whatever it is."

"The stars will be so bright tonight," he says.

"You're going to wake my father! Perhaps he'll stargaze with you," she whisper-calls down, huffing a little.

"You're right. I'll just go find his window --"

"Henry," she interrupts, dear _heavens_ , she's so quick to quiet her laugh, contain her smile with the press of her palm against her mouth. "Goodness. Alright, well, what was the idea, then? I throw myself out the window, and you'll catch me?"

"Yes," he whispers. He's full of such conviction, though, with so much intensity in his strong jawline, that she genuinely thinks he could mean it. "I'll even catch you with just one arm."

"My dashing knight," she teases, unable to keep hold of her beloved propriety and every reason she has to close the window. Whatever they are, they're not his sudden too-loud laugh or the bare strip of his neck. "How strong, how physically refined!"

"And you. Scale down the siding?"

"In my chemise? Oh, come off it," she chortles. "I just know the back door was put in for this very reason."

"Yes," he agrees. Only she's vanished from her window, so he's looking about for any other signs of life here. "For late night excursions taken without an escort, between the two sexes, with only the purest of intentions in mind, I reason. Of course, I should have brought more than the one blanket -- oh," he starts. Her glare's enough to remind him to whisper. "That was quick."

"Thank you," she hushes, closing the door so, so quietly, they're almost out.

He does, however, take a moment to squint slightly, trying to maybe make out the color of her gown or eye her form; he's.. he's not flushing red. "You look pretty."

"I know," she murmurs, grinning just a bit. "Where were we headed?"

"Please," he tells her, extending his arm primly for her to hold onto. "The park, madam. The best view of the skyline in town."

Biting down at her lip to tamper her grin, she squeezes his arm really rather affectionately as they scuffle along the steps. "That would actually be by the ocean, Henry. By the docks."

"If you'd rather there, I'll let you explain to my da' why we're alone together in the middle of the night when we run into him."

"Oh, sure," she quips, "it isn't like we're running off in the night to wed."

"No," he's hapless to agree, 'cause well, one day, alright? "He'd be upset he wasn't invited."

"He would believe I convinced you to come out with me tonight, I bet. He'd think I tossed a rock at your window."

"It's just off the foundation," he snorts, full volume now that they've made it past the gate. Here, he picks up what he'd brought with him and left beside the fence post: a basket ideal for Sunday picnicking. "You could knock on the glass yourself and likely open it from the outside."

"You shouldn't have told me that. Your father will suspect I know that."

"My father adores you," he contradicts, glancing down at her. "As does my mum."

"I know _she_ does," she murmurs. "But your grandfather --"

"And your father," he frowns. "He hasn't warmed to me. And I've known him since I was a boy."

Her sigh is this quiet, secret thing. "It's nothing to do with you, I promise."

"I could hardly blame you for it, Carina."

"No, just the reasoning for it," she swears, just the smallest movement, her hand moving down nearer to his wrist -- to his hand, like stars. Such an inevitable greeting, his heart against her heart.

"What did you do today?" he asks her quietly. It would be too easy to just take that chance, an instant of brevity and bravery and their palms' lifelines meeting.

"I met with Grace."

Bless him, he grimaces. "How social."

"Yes, she wouldn't quiet about how difficult of a time she's having finding a husband. She's got all these ideas of who he ought to be and how."

"How?"

She just slumps a little, and if her head presses against his shoulder for a moment, well. "He has to be between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, she says. Both of his parents have to be living; he's got to have some promised inheritance; a trade; he can't ever have been married before. Certainly no children."

"I meet that criteria," he vaguely says.

"Yes," she says, and there's her well-to-do and informative tone: the one he already loves. "There was more, but she's so determined on a man who meets her preferences that she'll consider no one else. What if her true love is a widower? Or terribly poor? Or values the warmth of good food more than he concerns himself with the size of his waistcoat, _honestly_."

"You're right."

"I know, Henry," she smiles, albeit a smidgen reserved.

"No. My mother had an idea of who she would marry," he tells her, meeting her eyes to see her sweet-faced interest.

"Was she as particular?"

"Yes," he says lightly. Like a secret, he hushes his voice by a breath, bends his knees just a bit so she doesn't have to strain to hear him. "She even knew his name."

"Oh, dear. Tell me."

"James Norrington."

"How sweet," she mumbles. Honest-to-God, he'll never not be surprised by her. She almost sounds sad! "He sounds sensible. I'll bet he kept his faith, attended every church service."

"I honestly have no idea," he says.

"Brought his mother gifts. Owned a white steed."

"You think?"

"Favored the color blue and wore brown shoes more than black, I'd say. I bet he was a dear."

"Mum said he was a bore. 'Course, she laughed after, so I doubt she meant it. She was telling me not to be so quick to turn down this other young lady, though, when she brought up the mysterious Mister Norrington and all the charm you're so fixated on believing he had."

"Which other girl?" she wonders curiously.

And that's one of the many things about her -- he doesn't think this is petty jealousy. She genuinely wants to know as she's taken this interest in his life, in _him_ , so all of it. The entirety of his existence but with hers, too.

"Miss Cartwright."

"Oh," she says.

"Yes. Now, she told me not to be so quick to declare my nonchalance towards her since one day years ago, when she was about sixteen and my father wouldn't so much as look at her."

"Men are oblivious," she frowns.

"She went on a walk with James."

"The bore?"

"Or so she thought until she says she heard him laugh."

"Really?" she wonders. It does make her grin just a bit to think about, seeing someone else so happy, perhaps. Since laughter can look fetching on anyone. She knows.

"She told me he was very handsome."

"I don't doubt it. But your father?"

"Love is love," he decides. It isn't really the story, but the truth of it, how someone unassuming might.. might grow to be very significant. _Carina_ , he rehearses internally, _I've got to tell you something._ "She wagered that she could have married Mister Norrington. But my father," he repeats. "The heart is certain."

"Or doubtful," she disagrees almost plaintively. "Who can really say? Maybe the heart isn't yet sure, or it's --"

"Scared," he interprets for her, stopping underneath this great, open sky to face her directly, as just a man who.. well. She meant it when she told him. He has more conviction than anyone she's ever met. "Carina."

" _Henry_."

Blame it on the stars overhead, the constellations positioned like candlelight. Every instant she'll presume she's changed her mind, but all of his certainty, all of his heart starting to breathe for her, heavens, _love_ he doesn't say, but he's still gazing at her like she's everything he's ever meant.

Tides rising and falling in his chest, the sea this symbol of earnestness between two people, "Carina," he says again, his tone strong enough to compel, to elicit, dawn breaking in hours like the old promise of _friends_ , oh. "You're changing my life."

\- -- - -- -

Before, "Oh," he starts dramatically, all emphasized, ridiculous, accented British inflection, "but Mother, how else am I to find an eligible woman to procure a family fortune? Here I am with no fortune, no prospects."

"Honestly," Weatherby Swan tuts, but here, at this dining table, he's all elbows on the surface and a bemused smile he only pretends is impatient.

In just as dire an accent, Elizabeth starts waving her dishrag like a lace handkerchief. "How else, indeed? Pray, it's ghastly to think you'll die alone -- God forbid you live the rest of your life indoors and secluded from gentile company."

"With a wealthy wife, why, we could afford three cows!"

"Heavy brocade curtains from France," she quips, oh-so gentile and fabricated while her father just rolls his eyes in good humor. "With fine violet dye from Asia."

"A solid gold carriage. My pulse rises just to envision the grandeur splendor!"

"Never again to have an original thought; you'll be able to pay for them."

"I declare, there will be a house for you and Papa on each continent! Might we afford such luxury, Grandfather? Doesn't it make you want to die enraptured?"

"Normally, I'd blame the parents when I witness such theatrics in a child," Weatherby scolds. "But you've encouraged her! My sensible daughter, why."

" _William_!" his mama half-shrieks, the accent still her whole persona's façade. Seeing her outstretched arms instantly draws him when he's stepped into the dining room, but half into reaching for her, he's finally cottoned on. "You'll never guess, dear, shall I share the joyous revelation with him, Henry, or shall you?"

"Ridiculous," his grandfather sniffs.

Henry just bites down on his spoon, tries so hard to not grin too wide. "You enlighten him, and spare no whimsical detail."

"Elizabeth --"

"William," she interrupts with this airy, effortless voice, "we no longer have to live in dread."

"Pray, tell me, my love," he encourages. He's not as strong on the dramatic British inflection as his wife and son are, but by God, he's got the heart for it.

"Honestly. It was only a suggestion."

"Our young boy," she whispers, and utterly ridiculously, they both turn to stare at him at the table, his mouth full of bacon. "Our Henry. He's saved us! He will attend the charming Lady Cartwright's party within the next month, dance her into a stupor, and then -- with his gallant, chivalrous charm -- he'll see their lives joined in a marital union."

"Is that so?" Will embellishes, not missing a beat. "We are saved! And we'll have more money than France, I bet. When can we expect to send the wedding invitations?"

"I'll start rehearsing my proposal now," Henry agrees with a pompous flourish, rising up to his feet.

"Honestly," Weatherby resigns yet again, huffing as Will sniggers himself into a seat opposite his boy. "I wasn't suggesting you had to marry her, but by attending the ball with me, well," he stumbles. All the eloquence of a diplomat, really. "It might be suggested. And you know an advantageous marriage would do nothing to hurt your situation."

"I've been to enough parties," Henry says. "They all only want to find a husband."

"As you should consider soon taking a wife."

"Father," Elizabeth warns. The atmosphere is still light-hearted and merry, but she know what she'll tolerate under her roof. "It's nothing that can't wait."

"His entry into refined society can wait, dear? I want you provided for, son."

"I am," he swore.

"But you will attend with me," Weatherby persisted. He's always had this way of making his sentences so harmlessly unassuming. "The boy's had a taste for the finer things in life," he says to Will, Elizabeth. "He would be welcomed in earnest. He could really rise in society if he wished."

"If he wished," Will echoes. He knows his son enough that he will go, but only to appease his grandfather. "I wouldn't mind if he never married."

"Or if he married the baker's daughter," Elizabeth adds in, taking the last seat at the table. The carpenter's son, neither, but alas. Weatherby's too delicate to be that open-minded.

"Or if he married a young lady from a successful family, found himself rooted in this town's legislature?"

"Oh, God," says Henry.

"It might happen," Weatherby shrugs, oblivious to that look he's sharing with his dad. "So we'll be prepared, won't we? Three weeks from this Thursday, my boy. And should you fall in love with the young woman --"

"My son," Elizabeth exaggerates in mock-falsetto, "ignoring social restraints to marry for love!"

"If only he'd found love last weekend at Miss Charlotte's coming-out gala," Weatherby sighs.

Just, Henry grins into his mug, 'cause he did. With the caramel cake at the banquet table, yes, but he did.

"Miss Charlotte was lovely," he excuses, since really, he doesn't mind the lavish parties, can't really say he hates all of the galas or the exhibits, the gatherings his grandfather brings him to because he is a Swann by legacy and no one's forgotten Elizabeth who married for love, who lives her charmed, perfect life with her blacksmith and their son.

"You said she smelled of potatoes, Henry," Will reminds him.

"Only a little off-putting, really."

\- -- - -- -

"It was cold," she states in what should be the obvious, the weather, the crunch of the snow that was beneath her boots, the dusting of snowflakes still in her hair. "If you must know, Henry claimed 'You look cold,' only much more masculine, and offered me his coat. It was fine," she tries to assure him.

"Treasure," he sighs. It's just. It's just the same facet of years ago; he can't bring himself to let go. "You're flushed. You're sweating."

"I've just come in."

"It's frozen air in here, Carina. Look at your breath. And you're practically melting from heat."

"It was the exercise," she reasons, because please. _Please_. Her vehement protests, though, are likely what he'll cling to in the future, _walking outside?_ he'll ask, but that's not -- that won't be for a while yet. She can believe herself when she says she feels fine.

And since she's smiling, Hector believes it, too, carries on in life just for her, now. There won't be anything left to do at all, really, since in the beginning, the pinnacle of _before_ that was the prologue of this man who loved someone else so much --

\-- like a heart bleeding out, like it could have seen him walking on water, treating his lungs like paper, saying he loved her and meaning it, oh, God.

All he had to do back then was stay.

So Carina.


	5. five

"Sometimes I dream of her," she admits.

Just, she's said it in this cautious sort of way, this hesitant piece of her soul unearthed in a way she doubted it would ever be; they don't really.. they don't necessarily _do_ this, talk to each other about anything that really matters.

Like intensity is this fine crackle and it's the igniting brown of his eyes, the steady way he's watching her as if it's almost always meant more -- every second they've ever spent together, every fragment of his soul that's just beseeching hers, recognizing the something in her that's a bit of a hurricane, yes, but God, he knows how to swim.

"I won't laugh," he swears right there.

Henry Turner who means every word he speaks to her, who looks like he'd rather face a plank than betray her faith.

It's _almost_ enough for the shackles she's built to crumble, but there's the other _if only_ , the way he holds her eyes when it's defiance that has her fidgeting: her hand smoothing the pleats of her gown, her fingers tangling in the stray curls at the nape of her neck, the nervous way she laughs that at once shows just how vulnerable she could let this make her, "Carina," he murmurs, soft.

"It's ridiculous," she chides herself. She just doesn't have the heart to call her feelings illogical. "The dead stay dead, Henry."

"They don't have to."

"I have no memory of her face. I was an infant; I don't know who it is I see when I dream, whose voice I'm hearing, but it can't be hers, really can't --"

"Wait," he interrupts, bowing his head all strong jawline grimaced in apology so she won't find him rude. As if she's any delusions about his behavior aside from the fact that they don't _do_ this, not the ocean's lulling sway, not the stars starting to glitter over the skyline, not him looking at her like this. Like he's recognized loss, too.

And if it's the loneliness in her or the abandonment in him. This ship they don't know is sinking yet.

"What?" she faintly whispers. She isn't flushing, no.

"Just tell me," he says to her. Impassively, but his eyes are asking her, pulling this fabric of a connection between them not too dissimilar from hope. "Improbable or not. Describe it to me."

Really, with the way her heart gives away from her, she never had much of a choice. "You understand my papa's never told me much about her."

"Grief is often expressed with the only way some know how to cope," he offers gently.

If she quirks her brow slightly, wondering just who is sharing their story, well. He bites his lip in silent _sorry_ , grins at her the next second, and oh, help. "I don't know if she could quilt or bake or sew or anything. I don't know if she had a profession, either, but." Truthfully, she wouldn't care what her mother did, charity work or the consort type. She just.. just wants her.

Silently, and with such tentative deliberation that it's a moment before he allows himself the touch, he rests his palm against her shoulder lightly. It's more comforting than it ought to be, stiff with social propriety as it is, but the way he's listening to her with his expression so warm. Her heart just swells with words unbidden. "It wouldn't have mattered, Hen-- Mister Turner," she frets.

"In my dreams, she's standing before the doors that open up to the garden. Except the roses are blue, as blue as the sky, and I can see the clouds as truthfully as I could reach out and touch them. The light shines in from the windows and softens her face so she's.. she's almost glowing there, on that green rug. In a pink dress with ribbons on the sleeves and a ribbon in her hair. It's like mine," she adds, with all the wistfulness to heavy to keep close to her soul sounding as forlorn as the ocean's collision against the docks.

"She looks happy," she says next with her shaking, cracking voice. "She smiles at me, and it's -- it's so lovely," she tries to explain like she's persuading him; there can't have been anyone else more beautiful who ever lived because she died, Margaret Smyth died and somedays, it's like the world doesn't recognize her departure while the next her absence in this chasm that _aches_ so painfully raw.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, pressing her fingertips to her cheeks to quell the sudden streaks of her tears. "Goodness, my heart."

"No," he insists so soothingly gentle, "no, no, sweetheart," he calls her, meeting her red-rimmed, watery gaze with his ribs just cracked open. "Carina, you're alright. You're so impressively strong -- here," he offers. He's quickly unknotted the tie from around his neck, unwrapped the fastenings so he can press the soft cloth to her cheeks. "I haven't got a handkerchief."

"Heavens," she murmurs, really rather pathetically, so much snot drooping from her nose that she can't be bothered to care anymore. Because that isn't it. "Do you know what?" she demands of him, her tears suddenly this anger, this hurt that.. that's genuinely all internal.

He sighs sadly. "What is it?"

"In my dreams, I could count each freckle she has, Henry. I can see her that clearly. But all she says to me is _hello_. Why couldn't my imagination create anything more compelling?"

"I don't know," he says honestly, watching her dab at her eyes.

"Why can't my imagination lie to me? Give her more to say? One word for seventeen years." Wasn't she worth more than that? Oh, _God_.

"You have the feelings she evokes. A picture of her so clear that I felt I was there, too, seeing her as you were. In flesh, Carina, breathing, living flesh."

That's what she has to hold onto, he won't say. She certainly knows it, but pain, the way her lungs could just char to ash and she could set a city to fire, she's sure, rage that's only the guise of hurt and wanting abandon. "What I wouldn't give to see her. Just once," she murmurs. It's this shadow of a whisper.

His quiet exhale again that's regret at not having more to offer her -- anything of value to say and have it matter. "It could be a memory," he tells her really slowly. "At least there's that. There's always hope, isn't there?"

"Henry," she says, almost disbelieving.

Or doubtful, _sorry_ , ironic, waiting, because this has been the preface, hasn't it? The indiscernible truth? The collision theory, that first apple that fell to defy everything expected of gravity, a touch so slight as this, not even skin against skin but that deep color of his eyes.

" _Henry_ ," she repeats, because oh, _help_ , he's gazing at her like this might truly mean more, after all. "I'm just going to tell you. I don't think wanting to live makes it happen. Will you remember that?"

"Yes," he says. Just, this laugh he gives like this is the tide, like this is the crescentic moon high in the sky, what will be a _C_ painted onto his skin, her name branded into his bones. His grins at her have yet to be the repetition of love. "I'll try, but I don't believe you, madam. Not the slightest."

\- -- - -- -

Growing up, Weatherby read him reports and the titles of documents, anything to maintain his interest or similarly put him to sleep.

His mum and papa, though, holy hell.

He was introduced to _Romeo and Juliet_ when he was nine, when one night instead of a tale from his da' about swashbuckling gallantry he'll still swear was embellished -- there was the reading of the play.

What started with Elizabeth innocently upstaging Will by voicing Benvolio perfectly then became a duel to pretend-death on his bedroom floor: antics and hysteria, the whacks of his and Will's wasters colliding in fatal attacks as they acted out each scene, the splendor of the gala and the fated first meeting, the somberness with which each soliloquy was delivered as if on a stage -- the world's finest theatre, really.

What is to be gathered is this: Henry grew up loved and never knowing hunger, never having really slept as an infant without resting in a pair of arms. He grew up with fun and with laughter and with silliness and his mother's resolute reprimand, her potential to soften a bit, though, when he tried to make that face his papa did all pouting mouth and expectant eyes.

He grew up having inherited sea legs just as much as enunciation so articulate, each world could have welcomed him whole-heartedly and his parents wouldn't begrudge him either decision. He grew up never knowing Elizabeth taught Will to play chess so he might teach Henry, living his life in informality even when his grandfather visited, yes; no renowned dining table he was forbidden from until he was grown, no being stowed away to the nursery when visitors arrived to see his parents, no, not even when he was seven, Carina six, with the memory that would follow him for years when she laughed, oh.

Henry grew up, is the mark; enchanted and loved and studious and spoiled and polite and certain and free to be himself, whoever he was.

Sharing a hymn with his grandfather during church services, convincing Jack to sail him to the nearest island and pressing his feets into the sand, learning to handle a sword from his father and having that memory of his papa's hand on the back of his head, his forehead kissed affectionately, Will telling him to parry with a bit more determination or his ears are going to be ringing.

Elizabeth teaching him to sew so he might mend the hole in his trousers he'd gotten from foolishly climbing a tree.

Uncle Jack helping him to spell out his name, pointing out the letters for the word _pirate_ , too.

The first few months after he was born, the once Elizabeth and Will walked in their home to see their son asleep in Hector's arms. The miracle it was his snoring hadn't woken the babe.

Him chewing on his Uncle Jack's hair. Him sleeping between his parents while they giggled and laughed and marveled at the wonder of a perfect child: their baby and the best of each other. Their knees against the other's knees, Will's hand on Elizabeth's giddy face, all their love pressed into the sleeping bundle of her eyes and his jaw; her toes, she swears; his smile, one day, the crinkles around his eyes, the light there.

\- -- - -- -

"Mum," he called, the effects of that one sunny afternoon, the few pink roses he had gathered in his hand. "I brought someone!"

That's when he glanced back to Carina, held the door open for her and her bemused, slightly confused face. "Your mother? I thought you were bringing the flowers to a young lady. Romantically," she added quickly. That is to say, Elizabeth wasn't an old woman, she just -- in the most inconspicuous way possible -- was here for the probable love story, the fairy tale elements of motif variety: roses.

"Henry, I heard a young woman's voice!" his mother announces from a room or a hall away. "Will she take tea?"

"Could I refuse?" she asks quietly, almost sounding like she'll laugh.

"Yes," he replies honestly. "You can. Come inside, please," he offers, and no sooner has she stepped onto the clean wooden floors than does Elizabeth reach the foyer.

"Carina, dear," she just _beams_ , her gown of dark green sweeping across the floorboards in a light swish. Whatever it is she smells like, vanilla, Carina thinks, it's all she breathes in when Elizabeth pulls her into her arms. "I was hoping to see you here soon. Ever since --"

"Mother," Henry interrupts a little too quickly. His grin, though, it's the stuff of secrets. "Not the time, yes? Mum. Mother. Mum."

He's still shaking his head when both women turn to look at him.

"..Sure," Elizabeth interprets tactfully. Call it the years of a socialite's breeding or just poor subtlety.

Carina glances between the two. "Is something wrong?"

"Find a vase, Henry," Elizabeth teases. "We'll retire to the parlor and conspire."

"I'm sure you'll leave me out of your secrets and gossip while I'm away."

"If not, the grievances we have against you won't circumvent back to your ears," Carina promises.

Her mirth makes Elizabeth laugh outright, has her taking the girl's arm in her own. "We'll have tea, and you can tell me about your time volunteering with the sick. Have you kept busy with anything else?"

"The sick," Henry repeats to himself -- they've already made it through the open double doors, so there's just him standing with the flowers in his hand, him who could be memorizing or realizing, feverish, delirious, _her_ with him, once again.

In perhaps not the tale of romance that she was here for, but his life decidedly just one memory after another, what might have been against what was. The face of one person he hasn't been quite able to forget, not since he was small. Oh, God.

"Henry," Elizabeth calls quickly when there's the shut and latch of the front door.

Pink roses left on the table in the corridor; Henry tracking through mud and then sand to reach his father's work.

\- -- - -- -

At least, Hector thinks, he hadn't lost his leg when Carina was a wee thing. When she would crawl then toddle then run under tables, over rugs, through the garden outside, he would laugh and be naught but three paces behind her, ready to catch her or swoop her into his arms, to toss her up and soar because she was the brightest point in all the world: the brightest star and the reason he carried on.

At least he had that comfort, that while she was learning to walk, she'd never fall because he could catching her, could rock her to sleep, if needed, could help her walk steady in ridiculous heeled shoes if necessary.

So when.. when reading aloud to him, pacing the floor as she spoke because she'd prattled something about mind _and_ body, when she suddenly couldn't breathe except she'd started to cough, too: rasping, harsh sounds he once heard a doctor pronounce as the _death rattle_ , recognized himself from hearing the sick at sea.

When upon insisting she was fine and fell to another coughing fit within seconds, when she -- when she started to sway.

Her eyes saw nothing and she fell, and because of his cursed, confounded wooden leg, because she was more than half across the room and he might not have even made it if this were more than six years ago, if he hadn't let protection fester to callousness and a heightened regard.

She doesn't hit the floor but the edge of a table instead; the blood on the floorboards, the blood running from her forehead in a small gash, the blood that makes her lips a bright, sick red.

He's almost helpless.

The physician insists on keeping her in one of the spare rooms of his clinic so he can monitor her. Barbossa, of course, contradicts this, fights this, swears at the portly doctor because she needs to be at home, she needs to be where he can see her breathe -- _no, I'm not saying I know better than you. But she --_

It's that Thursday she's tucked into a standard bed, in a room that's been whitewashed and cleaned sterile, where she's been a worker but never a patient, where one day, her mother was here and was told she was with child.

He sent for Elizabeth so his daughter wouldn't be handled by strangers; it's her who touches his arm as she passes him in the corridor, whose eyes silently wonder how bad this spout was until she sees it herself, Carina still lying there immobile and unconscious.

"Did you tell him?" he asked her more harshly than intended, this gravelly, desperate hush.

"As if I'd keep something from my son," she replied, and he --

\-- he couldn't fault her.

In that patient's room, Elizabeth does the Lord knows what, tries to wake her, he's sure, in the soft, lulling voice she once used to coax her own ill son back to their world of living. She pressed a cool cloth to her forehead, though, and brushed through her hair with the comb Hector had brought from Carina's room. The nightgown, dressing gown, blankets, and all he'd brought, those are next as she carefully starts at the buttons of her gown.

When Barbossa had been searching through a drawer for the nightdress he was after (her favorite, he knew; he is her father, after all, and her mother had favored the color blue, too), he had found a small stack of letters lying against the bottom. Letters he knew were from Henry without his daring to read them. He couldn't do that to her, yet he hated how she had kept this from him even though he could suspect why.

Elizabeth's back to the door that creaks when she opens it, not before pressing a kiss to the dear girl's forehead.

And in the physician goes to check her pulse and listen to her lungs. It's a measured three minutes before he announces there isn't a change, that Carina will likely wake before the dawn comes -- not to worry, really. The bleeding has stopped, so he'll stitch up the cut, alright?

"Elizabeth, he's asking me."

"He's capable. He's a credit to his work," she says since he's so scared, she knows, oh, God. "We'll be waiting downstairs," she assures him. "We won't interrupt your work."

\- -- - -- -

Before, though. By months and days. By sunlight and snowflakes and the fire in a hearth, when there would be merit to the snark and the desperation and the _love_ with which Henry will say _she may as well be my wife_.

All of the stars in the sky, each poor decision or muted mistake, each conflicted press of a metaphor along the lines of her palms, the soft set of his mouth against her neck.

Her hair's this curled halo around her, her cheeks so red. She has her hands on his face, her palms feeling just how he smiled and laughs, how his dimples give life to each of his breaths, the air she inhales and gasps, this color _red_ coloring each spot their bodies meet to heat incandescent.

In the darkness, in his arms. Laid back onto a blanket shirt his shirt unbuttoned and pulled off, resting as a pillow underneath her head. She can't properly breathe in words but how could she, he's looking at like she's precious, like she's the most beautiful thing he's ever touched. The most intelligent, and the stars above his head, how her fingers tangle in his hair.

He doesn't make an ordeal of this being her first time. There's no sentiment about her virtue or her maidenhood, his undying swear to ensure she's comfortable and her chastity is cherished. It wouldn't be what she wanted, and he knows. So he doesn't ask if she's nervous. He just asks her if she's sure.

She is.

They kiss in this breath so sweet that she's sighing open-mouthed, could pour herself into him like honey or sugar, her ribs are going all convex; _oh_ , she murmurs when he kisses spots down her jawline. " _Henry_."

As he lifts the hem of her dress to press against where she's soft, as he spreads her with his fingers and listens for each keening hitch of her breath that inhales so sweetly, so much need starting to press her hips against his hand in the heat that burns so _well_.

When he enters her and she's so sure she's felt his finger curl inside her, honest-to-God, she swears out loud and he _laughs_ so loudly at this joke that's him in love with her, her perfect, perfect self and the love she feels for him.

When he presses into her so slowly that it's time spun from straw to gold, her skin polished marble, the way he falls between her thighs like a drowning man's first solid breath: her name when their bodies are one and the love they're pressing into sex crescents to this wanting, breathless thing.

"Oh," she gasps when his hips press against hers, as he moves inside her in a way that has her moaning, _oh_.


	6. six

Before. By twelve years.

"And I expect you know all about raising children," Barbossa snarks, giving Jack this age-old, time-tested stare. "You'll say you'll know better than I do. You'll provide your credentials to a judge."

"I didn't say we ought to raise her together," Jack sniffs, turning to watch himself in the ornate mirror.

"Then what are ya saying, Jack."

"That you should listen to me. I'm rather good with young people, you know."

"Which is why you don't have any children to ruin the good earth, sure."

"Please, Jack scoffs, gesturing up to the ceiling -- the floor above where they'd left Carina laying on the floor in the hall in a huff, stuffed bears and books all scattered about as victims to her boredom. He had to listen to the girl explain the account of Troy's siege to him. 

And Hector, Christ, "She started to teach herself to read," was all he could say in pride and doubt. 'Course, she was also three-and-a-half, but _now_ she was reading the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ and trying to teach herself Greek. 

"Even with all _that_ up there: stubbornness, meanness, intellect. Your eyes. Proof enough to warrant never having a child," Jack Sparrow contradicts, because maybe it's only expected even if it's a lie. He'd give his beating heart for that girl, so when life is this _almost_.

This bittersweet recollection that wonders what _if_ he hadn't been as careful when visiting those houses of repute. What if he had loved someone enough to try for all of it, marriage, child, _land_ and noose, a lass's hand around her heart.

"She doesn't have my eyes," Barbossa says heatedly. He sits himself in a chair with far too much ceremony, too much protesting. "You know they're the colors of Margaret's. There's no reflection of me in Carina at all; she's --"

"Lovely," Jack suggests. "Intelligent. Good. Articulate."

"Piss off, Jack."

"Her eyes are the same shape as yours, I meant. Without the wrinkles," he shrugs, _of course_ , "but one day, I wager." 

Thing is, he doesn't sound as doubtful as Hector looks, as forbidding, 'cause just let a god sit with him in silence for a little while. He'll stop begging and quit taking a knee; Carina will live to ninety since why wouldn't she? Which deity would dare condemn her after hearing the child laugh. 

"Don't go on and fuss at me," Jack warns him suddenly, perking up a bit. "We're going to try this again."

"You'll overstay your welcome if you don't desist," Hector warns, glaring down at his cuffed sleeve. "Carina is fine."

"Fine?" Jack winces. "She's lonely. I doubt she's ever crossed this street."

"So she can be crushed by a carriage, Jack."

"She could catch fire in this house. There's no merit to either, mate."

"I've _tried_ ," Barbossa scowled, voice hushed lest his words carry upstairs. "I don't mind that I'm snubbed by society here. But her, Jack, she's better than all of 'em. And she wasn't invited to that Nesbit girl's tea party."

"How tragic."

"She told me she didn't want to go, but I know when she's lying," he huffed, pulling at his tie. Crossing his ankles, uncrossing them, clasping his hand over the arm of the chair with a scathing breath, "They're cruel children. And do you know what I did?"

"I can guess," Jack said slowly, because this -- seeing the Hector that arranges dining menus and spends afternoons in the garden. Feeds the cow and takes his child (a real, living, blood-born child) to church, stops in Raleigh's shop to purchase hair ribbons for her. It's a far cry from the way things used to be. But better or worse?

"I arranged our own tea party," he confesses. "I spent two hours drinking hot water and having her correct my manners."

"You could have invited _me_ , then," Jack quipped.

"I certainly never would! She's already fond of you," Barbossa snapped, all teeth. "I won't have her struck with grief 'cause you'll only be around, when? Once every few years? She misses you, you fool."

(And that -- that really didn't hurt all that much. Not really.) "I don't know; I've been thinking I could settle for the country life. Own some chickens. Keep a pig with Gibbs."

"You'd never last it."

"Please," Jack scoffed. He dismissed that with a wide gesture, indicating the greenery outside. The rolling hills, the garden, the park not too distant a walk under the cover of starlight. "We could be neighbors, Hector. Would you let me borrow a cup of sugar?"

"She needs more constants in her life," is all Barbossa interpreted. "And she really wanted you to attend her birthday celebration."

"There will be another," Jack dismissed. Because he had already apologized to the little lady and swore he'd make it here for the next, because Hector. 

He doesn't always dissociate between the dead and the living, Jack thinks. He believes he sees in Carina too much of her mother, so the over-protection, the stifling hold that swears to only want to keep her safe and healthy, "Jack. She won't be waiting all her life away for a pirate."

"She isn't Maggie, mate," he contradicted gently, words given pause after a long moment. "She's different. She's sensible. She's got your chin and temper and all."

"That might not be it," Barbossa found himself saying. Because so much will change as tides do, shorelines rising and falling, but his doubt. His fear. 

"Hector," Jack just had to to wonder. "Did that doctor fellow ever actually say Carina would get sick?"

\- -- - -- -

"He's fourteen," Elizabeth sputtered, once upon four years prior.

"I know," Will snorted, this quiet, amused little huff into his wife's neck. 

"Fourteen," she repeated. "Who can he be kissing at the age of _fourteen_? I wasn't kissing anyone at the age of fourteen. Of course, I wanted to be," she added 'cause she won't ever let him forget it, likely, how oblivious she claims he was when it came to her affections. 

"But it worked out, didn't it," he remedies, pulling her into his arms. "I'm much better at it now than then."

"Excuse me," she affronts, pressing the heel of her palm against his chest. That glint to her eyes that's all mischief and tease, he hates it as much as he loves it, the softness of her laugh against his cheek. "Just who were you kissing then?"

"There are more pressing questions here," he says. "Like our son --"

"Yes," she huffs. Just, it's really amused. "You've never seen the girl before?"

"Never."

"And he didn't seem embarrassed you had found them?"

"It didn't look too compromising," he reasons. "Although, I did, well."

"You did _what_ , William?" she warns, sitting up just a smidgen so she's that much more intimidating. 

"I asked him if he knew what he was doing," he admits quietly. Which is perfectly sensible, to his thinking, since he had meant to be reassured by his son's naïvety and answer any questions in a vague enough manner to still be helpful and parental. That's all. "I wasn't about to interrogate him, Elizabeth. I wanted him to be able to share this with me, not keep it quiet and secret."

"No, of course not," she reasoned. 

That way she pursed her pretty mouth, though, "Just ask, love," he quipped.

"What did he _say_ , Will?" she must know, even as she takes hold of his shirt in her hand, nestles back against his side all squirming rib bones, cold toes pressed against his shin.

"He said that was the first time he's kissed anyone. And you should have seen his face! He's such a romantic, dear. He couldn't stop grinning."

"For the love of God," she quietly laughs. "I suppose it's time."

"Yes," he agrees. "Except he told me he was very sure that he knew what he was doing."

"Very sure," she repeats, grinning at the way his frown pulls around his stubble. "Why so confident, I wonder."

"Oh, I asked him," he tells her balefully, smoothing his palm over her arm. "And do you know who he said? Jack."

\- -- - -- -

Before, Jack taught him to swim by pushing him off the deck of his ship. 

And before that, Jack let Carina teach him the proper etiquette with which one should behave at a tea party. 

And before that, since he figured that children were just -- well. They weren't for him; they wouldn't _like_ him since he figured the parents likely wouldn't always in the lives they would make for themselves: Elizabeth who was undoubtedly still in love with him, who had been upset he had been there for her when Will couldn't be as the sea was a jealous mistress, Will who had never hated him, not really, but would always think of him as someone who followed a different dream, who saved his life and wouldn't ever forget it, and Hector who he could kill, who would kill him just as quick as cry at the funeral, go to the ends of the world to bring him back or hold onto in death, the final epilogue and the last beseeching trick of time. 

If he's being honest with himself (and Jack Sparrow never is), then it was his own pride that kept away and called him back to sea. He wouldn't ever belong in the world of frills and ornate grandeur, manners and land-loving society. It was pride that had him feel he was achieving more in his life than they, waiting at home with a baby and with life and schedules and the like. 

He had months of baby and almost-toddler Henry chewing at his hair or squishing his face in his little hands; he had months of Carina's baby snores and cries and sweet gurgles before he left, when Hector insisted he was fine and no longer in mourning, that he could see this through, parenthood, like it was a business like he didn't love the girl like he wouldn't soon always and forever. 

Honestly, it was a letter from Henry that had seen Jack back into his life. A letter Elizabeth penned for him since Henry couldn't yet write or hold a quill without wanting to use it to scribble drawings on the upholstery or practice performing percussion rhythms for a battle. 

The letter might have been more charming -- Henry had claimed his father told him bunches about Jack, that he missed him -- had he not asked Jack to bring him a gift, too, something from far away and for a pirate. 

Call it something about he's always known what he's wanted; he's always been quick to bring someone else a smile, maybe, or he's really just only ever wanted to hold onto family. With fists and with hugs and with his soft heart reaching out and straining against the confines of reality, yes. Even though they often only saw Uncle Jack under the cover of nightfall. 

Even though it's still something quite difficult to understand: rhymes and reasons and the fragility of a heart, what it connotes to love someone so much that above all, really. 

You would stay.

\- -- - -- -

 _During_ , it was a day that was more rain than sun, more wind than cheer and bright eyes instead of red noses and muddy hems. It's been a decent half hour without a downpour, though, so Henry's this drought in the wet streets, this flicker of light through parted clouds, the puddles that glimmer on slanted cobblestones. 

The sky might be silver, and just the courage it takes to hold someone's hand, that could be like kissing her, hand to hand, arm so perpetually against arm. A holy palmer's kiss, perhaps, since give it the next several minutes or the coming week, and she won't be the only one to know her thoughts of religion and man's own fallibility. 

It's one moment amongst many that lack in subtlety when love for them has always been this straightforward ideal. When he slides open the door to his family's pew in the old stone church, it's to Carina sitting where she's tended to for who knows how long -- the place next to his mother's spot that he once used to occupy before he was seemingly replaced, the place just inches from him. A mere breath away that has her refusing so much as a glance in his direction because she _knows_ it's him just as well as she knows she'll continue to draw breath without conscious effort. 

All her heart laid to rest on the wooden floorboard, her curled hair soft on her shoulders. 

"Which verse?" he asks her politely, and heavens, the slight way she doesn't decidedly smile, oh, _help_.

"Henry."

"We might read together," he suggests gently, opening up the covers of his own tome. It's all very sanctimonious -- holy; the first he ever takes a knee and considers religion with the same preciousness with which he reveres her. "I doubt God would disapprove." 

"And I doubt He would have you speak as His authority," she teases, turning in her seat to face him a bit. "Besides, He knows all about intent, I'm sure."

Only, meeting his gaze has her instantly beginning to laugh. Giddy and porous, she has to stifle her chortles with a gloved hand over her mouth when an older woman on the opposite aisle glowers at them. A thousand apologies, all the social regard -- Henry just watching how much lighter happiness makes her, and all his beating, breathing heart, 

"Carina," he whispers, grave and mock-serious. Everything in his face is so pretentiously solemn that she can't even pretend she isn't rolling her eyes. "Giddiness is a sin. I remember that sermon, growing up."

"So is free-thinking," she says seriously, all prim inflection like _don't you know?_

He coughs instead of laughs, but according to that old woman, it's still much too loud. "Old Testament or New, then?" he persists. Because he's trying to be proper about this -- he really is. 

"Henry."

"I don't mind either one."

"Henry, I'm not reading the Scripture," she whispers, voice hushed and _almost_ ashamed. Heavens. "It's Shakespeare's _Tempest_."

"Oh, my goodness."

"Quiet," she chides him, looking around the chapel. 

"How sacrilegious you are!"

"Henry," she huffs, biting down at her lip so she won't grin. "Please."

"No, I was prepared to read through the _Exodus_ with you," he says. "I feel cheated. I'm sure _He_ does, too."

"I doubt He would be pleased you saw fit to interrupt me here. What if I had been praying?"

"What if I've the calling of a cleric, but you, m'lady, continue to dissuade me from the faith of religion."

"How sensible of me, really," she teases.

"More like how heinous," he admonishes, lowering his voice once more since God help them, they're everything but discreet, chortling like schoolchildren, letting their fingers brush as much as they might dare when she passes him her book. "I've not read this one. Are there witches in it, too?"

"I don't know," she lies. So smoothly that she might mean it. Conviction really does brighten her smile into this blessed thing. "You could read it, then return it to me with some of your thoughts written in."

"Or I could speak them to you," he supposes. "My mother's invited you to picnic with us this Sunday after services. There will be others present as well, so don't.. don't misunderstand this as something romantic," he says, really quite tactically and nonchalant -- he'll keep praying, and she'll make better use of their knees (think logistics; think they weren't a love story from the start) --

"You mean it won't be intimate," she interprets. 

How quickly he flushes is more endearing than it ought to be. "We are in the _House of God_ , madam."

"Being surrounded by half the holy crowd makes any familial gathering decidedly less intimate," she frowns. "Don't pretend to be so brazen."

"Don't pretend you would rather I withhold any commentary on account of your womanhood _if_ I were. I'm not proposing we marry," he says, just so she'll smile and won't think on how it keeps coming back to what they aren't instead of are: whole-hearted and inhibited, "it will be lunch with family and half this town."

"But with you," she murmurs, her nose crinkling just a bit. 

"Yes," he says. And the eye contact, dear God, a lifeboat could be made of the way he's looking at her. "Especially with me, Carina."

"Oh, dear," she suddenly whispers in this tone pitched so inexplicably morose. It does make her laugh the next instant, agitated old woman be damned, as once more, the slightest touch of just their hands like the entire galaxy convulsing -- love in one of her palms, _him_ , and the rest of the fucking world in her other hand like she won't be the first of creatures to wonder why not have both, why does life have to be either _or_ , why go breathless when imagining just one kiss like it wouldn't be love flowing from either of them so raw and so, _so_ beautifully. 

_"You know,"_ he will say once, when all their delusions are gone and he's -- he's genuinely the last she was ever apologetic in changing her mind. Since romance wasn't the guarantee, since.. since it really wasn't supposed to be like this at all. Her lonely and his hurt, the longing that's made two souls go a little weak. _"You were practically sleeping, but you said you loved me, Carina."_

 _"Heavens,"_ she'll say, and she will be. _"Did I sound as if I meant it?"_ she will want to know, as she reaches out for his face with her palm just so his stubble will rough against her skin, as he presses his lips against her hand's lifeline, every _I love you_ that's never been uttered.

Conviction or perdition or the truth they've known for months, _"God_ ," he'll say. _"Yes."_

\- -- - -- -

Shakespeare's penned the romantic sonnets into tragic strictures, so if it's life that imitates art, if love is to have been whitewashed windows, a tide rising in his chest like a mountain with her handprints all over it. 

_After_ her and him. 

He reads Shakespeare's _Tempest_ during the funeral, feels each annotation they made like the sliver of the moon once curled over his wrist. He doesn't cry until the burial where she's covered with earth and dirt, salt and sand, a copy of Twelfth Night in his hands later in that tavern that reeks of smoke. As she's laid to rest and his bones are brittle and the ship has sunk, _her spirit, stronger than the sea's embrace_ , if only they had more time. 

(Will all but carries him home, after, but truthfully, Jack sat with the boy and drank and remembered her with Henry for an hour before he sent for William, before he began to worry that hurt like that, agony so _red_ that he could do nothing when Henry crumpled into his arms, started to bargain like he'd duel Galileo himself, _bring her back_ and save the stars that never fell at all, hurt like this. Maybe there was no coming back.)

\- -- - -- -

"Miss Carina," this man she doesn't know starts, and oh, she takes her gaze back from the opposite side of the ballroom, from him, to this fellow with red hair, an ambition to achieve a fortune likely, oh, no. "I've just had the pleasure of speaking to your father."

"Yes," she says politely, and dear, he practically preens. "I have the pleasure of speaking to him every day."

"How coincidental," he agrees flippantly, grinning all looks and no brain, that's -- that's quite enough.

"Excuse me," she says, no doubt looking as confused as she feels. The density of men is a wonder, her starting to feel poorly, less so. 

"Let me escort you, madam," swoops in this other gallant young man, no doubt, his hat already off as he all but bows. "Were you headed for the gardens? I, too, feel the pains of large gatherings."

"No," she slowly frowns, taking the social cue to step just a little farther away. Dancers keep twirling past, giving the party enough life and color to last well into morning. "Thank you, but I wasn't going to leave the room."

This man's dazzling pout, domineering frown. She's heard all about his garden excursions with the Lady Pierce, alright. "Surely you would keep me company, though?" he asks, looking so sure she'll agree. 

"Well, I've promised the next dance, you see," she admits. She doesn't bother to force an apology. "Unfortunate timing."

"The most."

"Carina," Henry calls her gently. Much too quiet for a crowded ballroom, but if she were to consider the effects of his life on hers, intellect against mannerisms and gala inclusion, he would be standing in this room alone with her. "Shall we?" he says. 

In both circumstances, he's suddenly so close that the bell of her skirt brushes against his leg. 

"Turner?" the man asks, brows raised. His inflection isn't outright cruel, but there's insulting subtext meant for the family name, she's sure.

"Good evening, Grayson."

"Just the one dance?" he asks, looking between them to Henry's gentle grip of her arm now. His smile's quite disconcerting. "Watch yourself, Henry. I'm hoping to see Miss Barbossa again before the night's through."

"Yes," is all he says. "I'm sure you will. Come," he directs to her next, simple, and it's quiet gratitude only that has her following his steer through waltzing couples and business ventures. "You looked miserable, miss."

"Was it that obvious?" she asks, only now starting to feel she might've treated Henry more graciously had she been thinking. 

She's taken aback just for a second, though, struck by how the music changes under the instruments' command, how he bows to her with his eyes raised. 

"I was watching, to be fair. And you haven't yet danced with anyone. So may I?"

"I'm not the best," she warns him. Only that isn't a definite refusal, and it's -- it's too electric. When his hand rests over her back softly. "You haven't danced with anyone tonight, either, Henry."

"I was waiting," he says as they start to move, as one step and then another. Chandeliers and candlelight like stars, like _maybe_ they could, perhaps they might let themselves. 

"I don't like the way he said your name."

"It isn't an issue," he deflects, oh-so heartachingly stalwart. 

"I doubt you've ever been mean to anyone," she doubtfully says. And then must mean it, because eyes can not be that brown, that warm, and be cruel and vindictive. It just might break her heart for true.

"I don't know," he reasons. The music soars to this cheerful crescendo; her head starts to flutter as she spins, comes back into his arms a little too readily that he's gone tense. "I tried to act civilly towards Grayson. I don't mean to be forward."

"No more spinning me, please," she actually chortles: the swirling room gone shifted and tossed. The way the eye contact might be an anchor, how her body still sways like they're Copernicus's revelation to the earth's revolution, his hand in hers warm as the sun now that they're standing still and have been for the seconds it's taken her to breathe, "Henry."

"Honestly," he's realized, sighing heavily through his teeth. So they won't be holding hands, so he won't take what she wouldn't want him to, he exchanges his grip to support her forearms. "Carina? You smell of brandy."

"I would never."

"I know who does," he sighs really rather hollowly. Just, he's relieved he picked up courage like a pink flower when he did, or it wouldn't be him helping her to the chilled, open air of the garden alone.

Even if she does scrunch up her face and bemoan his chivalry, insist she can walk alone and know that with her stubbornness, she could. 

And does, stumbling, but she does; this won't ever change. She's never needed him and likely never will. 

He won't remember or recognize her from the once their paths crossed on a street just outside the tea house where she half-curtsied an apology and continued to walk on, where he didn't glance back down the ways to get retreating figure since love's soliloquy had never been introduced. 

Likewise, she won't remember much of this evening neither, though it was an uneventful gathering to begin with -- a tired spectacle she's witnessed before, all pomp and ceremony, but the dance. That's the shame and the pity, how he won't tell her because he'll worry she wouldn't want to know. 

How she won't let on because he never shall -- there's the shame; the fool she wasn't much of in tipsy misdemeanor. How disinterested she'll presume he was since he regarded himself so distant sat on a bench opposite of her. Why they didn't speak a single word for the rest of the night except _are you feeling better? Less muddled, less dizzy?_

Well. Some of the memories are bound to sting and sever.

"Almost, Henry."


	7. seven

"Are you _sure_ you wouldn't like my coat?" he's asked her for the third time already. He sounds so doubtful, though, that's all, and as much of a comfort it is to know he'd freeze himself to pneumonia in the name of chivalry, she can't help but laugh quietly to herself and at him -- the comedy of this entire situation.

The joke that's her so in love with him already, "No, thank you," she refuses politely, her breath frozen to a cloud of a chill on this dusk evening.

"If you're certain."

Her wrap is much too light, yes, but even with the brisk walk back home, she can still feel heat flushing her skin, so she's alright -- really. Him, he's the one that shivers with every word, laughs open-mouthed with shivering teeth and frantic stares skyward like the heavens will heave more snow at them.

So nonetheless, like there's really any choice. "Do _you_ want to wrap up in my shawl?" she asks him, feeling her grin quirk her mouth upwards.

"Carina!" he snorts before he can help it.

"Listen to your chattering teeth!"

"Madam," he begins in his _proper_ tone (the one he uses when he's very cross with her or.. or very in love -- she can practically hear the chimes of a proposal inquired when he uses this voice like melted butter and etiquette), _oh_ , "don't jest. I think I must stop being so selfless when in danger of frostbite."

"Oh, you embellish," she chides him, glancing up.

"A little." He offers her his left arm as has become habit now, and she doesn't think twice about taking it, bringing them just the closest bit nearer so they could be the same shadow. Were they less hindered by disregard -- "My grandfather says frigid air is healthy for one's constitution, besides."

"Yes? I can imagine that would be true."

"He also says," Henry notes, helpless to keep from shivering and getting on to what he means: the rest of his life with her, "that you are impressive. He had only good things to say, you know, when I had the chance to speak to him tonight."

"He seems too easily impressed," she denies. And grins, half as bright as the stars starting to shine through the melting blue sky, fractured by glimpses of purple where the sun's still touched, "I'm going to say something scandalous," she lets him know. "Do prepare yourself."

"I'm riveted."

"Well. He's equally as impressed with my father's pocketbook, isn't he?" she wonders lightly. Without judgment, but doesn't intelligence do for one's tone what indelicacy can? It's too obvious as much as it isn't, her setting her free left hand to join her other on his forearm so he won't leave her.

"I won't speak poorly of him, Carina."

"No, no, I didn't mean that." As they near the cross in the street, they slow for the carriage bustling past, and she dares to think why _not_ just give their souls to chance? "I meant, he seeks an advantageous match for you, Henry."

"And I meant, my grandfather wouldn't insult me by only taking notice of your dowry when I've -- "

"Yes?" she persists quickly.

His resulting laugh is utterly _ridiculous_. He goes all crinkle-eyed, and that part of him that's more man than boy, he's far more sensible than she is somedays. "I speak of you often, Carina," he says. In such a way that's almost sighing.

"What particularly?"

"Your beauty," he says automatically, just 'cause it makes his heart seize when she rolls her eyes.

"Try again."

"How terribly intelligent you are, mostly."

" _Terribly_? Mostly?"

"Well, I have told him I think you're beautiful, too. And you know I didn't mean that in a negative manner."

"But _terribly_ ," she repeats, frowning.

"My _lady_. You mean to torment me."

"I'd never."

"Then punish me, more like. Semantics, my dear."

"Now you're being bold as well as egregious."

"Egregious?"

"Implicative?"

"Implicit," he tries, since perhaps if she wasn't so much of a lady, if -- if he had accompanied her to tonight's legislation as a suitor instead of just a male escort only present to keep her from getting heckled, well.

"If only," she says like she can sense it. A little mischievous, though, like how the moon always changes.

"Advantage doesn't have to be wealth," he decides, his voice a little hard.

Much with the same assuredness that he once decided his future would be here someday, his heart gone to her like they're two children playing with matchsticks again, love ready to blaze since this quiet sort of affection _should_ be the love in which a heart should riot and burn. Ready to taunt the whole universe and walk through a fire unscathed; hell, oh, the sonnets and the poetry.

The symphony that played when their eyes met across a crowded ballroom, the heaviness of that first formal _hello_ \-- she wants any sonnet, any story that's going to be hers, "Advantage," he continues. "Could be any benefit: mental, physical. Any adequate agreement arranged by two involved parties of.. of similar interests, I don't know."

"Like what?"

"That is, when two people of the same -- er."

"Henry," she interrupts softly. He must know how he looks, biting at his lip like that as if he's anything but unsure or utterly, irrevocably helpless to this. "You mean two souls of a like mind who -- who might otherwise find themselves romantically invested."

"Well, yes," he tells her. Quite breathlessly, too, even though they've stopped walking. "One might hope."

"This is my house, Henry."

And mere steps away, maybe without either of them realizing it. There would be the pink roses the frost has hidden, his breath still this visible chill. "Of course."

"Yes," she says. She isn't sure what else she could convey to still keep them the opposite of cohesive.

"Would you like me to see you to the door?"

"I can manage just fine, thank you."

"Alright."

But as he starts to turn, oh, _God_ , she's barely called his name like the cry of desperation, like he wouldn't come back to her and take hold of her hand, hear just how she exhales when he lifts her palm to his lips and kisses her skin with his chattering teeth. His heart on the pavement, hers soaring overhead, "Oh," he whispers. "Carina, your hands are warm."

"And yours are frozen," she quietly says. That his breath is a pyre, though, she won't; it's something she can feel beneath her breastbone. Hidden so under her ribs. It could almost make her headless. "Goodnight, Henry."

"Good night."

\- -- - -- -

The end of the _before_ , perhaps, when one testy conversation after another, hidden subtext underlying snark in conversations in gardens and in rooms in vain -- subtext they'll both pretend annoys them more than it genuinely does -- it's not quite camaraderie. But it's still more than mere friendship.

"My grandfather is my greatest friend," he admitted to her. Upon seeing _that_ look from her that tried to disassociate the man from the star body, he shrugged back rather haplessly, pocketed his hands in his russet brown coat. "I mean it. Somedays, he is."

"I wouldn't have guessed."

"You don't know me, Miss Carina," he shot back. And there's the be-all-end-all, the instant that's a cross between kissing or cursing or may have been had they not been so elusive from the start. "No matter how you think you do. I reckon you believe you've every man for miles figured out."

"Maybe all but one," she couldn't help but tease.

Since it's a different topic, one moved on from what they'll discuss later. Too much of, _"My grandfather always wanted a son, I guess."_

_"But he has your father."_

_"He has me,"_ he'll correct, and no one (maybe not even Hector) has ever been able to begrudge Henry Turner anything.

"I'll bet my mother knows that fellow of yours, anyways. She continues to find society wanting, but Grandfather keeps her from being forgotten."

"As if she could be," Carina agrees. "But I only know his surname. Graham."

"Tell me again how you met?"

"He knocked on the door."

"Without calling prior?"

"It was more proper than theft," she reminds him. The pink roses a level beneath her window: the love story she thought she was walking into. It really wasn't supposed to be her own -- it was never supposed to be in the stars; love doesn't just. _Happen_ like eye contact. "He needed directions. Papa and I were just about to go out, you see."

"I'm trying."

She continues, nonplussed. "He was trying to find the battlements."

"I hope the Navy didn't commission him as their cartographer. Can geography be ironic?"

"Can you desist?" she snaps, no bite at all while he just _laughs_. "I can't speak of his position until I know it."

"I'd be happy to help," he decides. "But only since you're to help me become more acquainted with Miss Josephine."

"I've done my part in that. Of course, if I've embellished to her your finer qualities so much that she fines the reality disheartening, well," she says none-too-apologetically, frowning like it's such a shame, really, her eyes aren't grinning, no.

"You're as rude as I remember," he realizes, gaping at her in mock civility. "How _dare_ you, miss."

"How dare I? How dare you! I didn't call you rude."

"You suggested it. Or did you suggest I was less than handsome or much more boring?"

"You could have connoted my embellishment as a high and worthy opinion," she says, scrunching her nose. "You're so severe."

"And you're such a contradiction. Maybe if you weren't a lady, I'd --"

"What?" she interrupts him, helpless to keep from grinning because he _is_ , bright and laughing to himself and squinting overhead, the sun that stretches on and on. "You'd demand I save any further grievances until dawn? Bring some pistols and a second so we might settle the matter?"

"Actually," he tells her, a little like he's looking at her like this might mean more, "I think you'd make an excellent second. I can't imagine anyone would ignore you when you speak of peace and compromise and rationale. Sensibility, even, or honor."

"Then _you_ embellish," she murmurs. Since her face is starting to flush, she can feel it, with this almost painful realization that.. that something about them just might not be probably. Life really is an _almost_.

So he doesn't have to look at her quite like that, with intensity enough to melt her blood and cinder her bones. Granted, it's still that first month, but no matter how they imagine it, some parts will continue to riddle them until they're forgotten.

One Miss Josephine, a suggestion made by his grandfather because it has stopped being about the security of money in some regard; Weatherby doesn't want to see Henry live his life in reclusive loneliness like him.

And one Mister Graham who called Carina a _lady fair_ , who bowed when he bid his leave and his thanks, who strode his horse and glanced back to the house from down the street. To her only a little struck, to Hector who was leaning out the door to watch him, too, "That was a beautiful man," he told her seriously, half-holding onto his heart. "Good Lord, in the Navy, as well."

"Papa," she snorted. "Please."

"I'm just saying," he chided. "Marrying in the military would keep you safe and secure. I'd approve."

"Of him?" she startled, clutching her chest. "We don't know that man."

"Of a _military_ man, treasure."

(So that approval and worth would get tied up like sails overhead, carry Henry back to these steps with her and _air and his strong will to leave his trade to join the Royal Navy, perhaps, what would she think?_

_"Are you -- are you asking my permission?" she almost laughs because he suddenly looks so peevish, so angry that he's all defined brows and refined bone structure._

_"I'm asking your_ opinion _, dear."_ )

God. It's like what else won't have to be done to see the end a happy one?

\- -- - -- -

"I'm fourteen," she reminds Uncle Jack pensively, as if he'd ever forget. "That makes me plenty old enough."

"Not for the things I have to say, love," he mutters, frowning around at this pink room. The ornate mirror, the silver hairbrush: the signs of wealth and privilege and a loved, happy child, but then the white blanket folded neatly in a basket by the window.

The blanket he watched Elizabeth painstakingly knit fourteen years ago -- the same one this girl once asked her father if her mother made for her before she passed.

And Hector. He couldn't bare to crush her hope, and he'll never forgive himself for saying _yes_ instead of _Margaret couldn't knit but she quilted_. That threads of fate are threads of love and it doesn't matter that Carina isn't as impressed by this quilt as she is the delicate blanket; there has to be something subconscious that draws to her this old, patched quilt her mother made even if she doesn't know it, if comfort is always given and the dead never truly leave.

There's a lot about Carina that has always had her breaking Jack's heart (like the first he heard her cry, hell) so this won't be any different.

She's never been shy about asking him questions, never had much regard for any intricacy that should have seen her more reserved. When it's her boldly asking him if death hurts, though, if it's truly this fearsome, emblazoned thing.

"I assume you mean your mother," he says to her stoically, eyes a little dark. "I don't know why you think I was there."

"But you know everything," she's so sure, sitting up a little straighter. "Didn't Papa tell you?"

"He said it was complications in the child bed. Do you figure childbirth is painless?"

"Well, I've never," she flusters, since that's just a bit easier than being sad about it. Say what you will, but Jack Sparrow's never kept anything from her, and she isn't about to dissuade him from the fact by proving unable to tolerate the grief. "Isn't it supposed to be bearable if things go correctly?"

"Things," Jack interprets. "I've never, neither. Several hours of hell, I reckon, but it's all grand since you're handed a baby at the end. You're enough proof _things_ went right, love."

"Just not for Margaret Smyth," Carina persists. Like she's damn-near trying to get him to 'fess up to something; fine.

"Hector tell you her full name?" It's his experience as an uncle that has him this perfected glare that begs the truth. She's just more adamant about it than Henry is.

"He still only calls her my mother. Or Meggy."

"Of course."

"Her name was written in a letter," she defends, apologetically wincing at herself in shame. "Anyone could have seen it."

"I suppose it was resting on a table or a desk where anyone, someone who knew where to look or which drawer to open to retrieve said personal document, might have been able to see it out in the open, as well."

"Well --"

"Anyone could have seen it had they known where to pry. Correct?"

"It didn't hurt anything," she mutters. A smidgen self-consciously, she straightens the pleats of her skirts, maybe tries to not cry because she's always been too brave for that.

"You don't think you'd hurt your father's feelings? Don't you figure he would want to do the telling when it comes to cause and effect and death and whatsit?"

"But he never tells me anything. That hurts _my_ feelings, Uncle Jack."

"And you hurt my pride," he gripes. " _Captain_."

"Papa says you aren't a captain."

"Slander and lies," he sniffs, indignant.

"Papa says you commandeered his ship," she says in that confounded informative tone of hers.

"What?" he starts in a fit. "You know his version of the truth is selective."

"And yours."

"Certainly not," he tells her, grinning a little too roguishly. "Is that the end of death, then? What next?"

"Love," she barely says, tentatively and quite decidedly not looking at him. She's all the pinker for it, too. "What do you think about love?"

"I don't think anything of it," he quips.

"Why can't you ever be serious?" she sighs like she's scolding. Even at fourteen, she's already so imperious.

"Why must you always be so serious?" Because Hector is saying she won't be waiting all her life on a pirate, Henry is asking Jack what he thinks about _him_ becoming a pirate, so the answer to that, that's the same as this girl asking him about love, _Carina_. "You're too young to know." Irony is life's greatest intricacy.

("I'm fourteen," she reminds him pensively. "That makes me plenty old enough."

"Not for the things I have to say, love," he mutters.)

"Have you ever been in love?"

"Have you?" he throws back, looping his finger through the tea cup's handle like it's a ring.

"Not really," she mumbles, glancing upwards like _that_ is the trick of it, what she's really been meaning to get at. "Perhaps, I've been."

"Perhaps, aye?" he muses, all quirked, amused brows.

"Not with a person, not really," she hurries to explain. "Perhaps only Shakespeare or Orion or Achilles."

"Is that right?"

"Paris."

"I hear it's a charming city."

"Uncle Jack," she sighs so, _so_ heavily that it almost hurts him, has him half rolling his eyes in fondness because he knows Paris is that bastard in that damned play she's obsessed with. He knows, and he would say so if she didn't suddenly make it so difficult to breathe. "The doctor thinks I'm more prone to get sick since Mama died after birthing me, doesn't he?"

"You can --" God, he has to fucking clear his throat. He stands up and paces, 'cause what she means but won't say is that to die without falling in love would be painful, that give it three years, and she'll be in another house's library and thinking again that she doesn't want to die. "Maybe just wanting to live makes it true, aye?" he tells her, sounding just so sorry.

\- -- - -- -

He wakes to the faint glow of a lantern shining soft red against his eyelids, light so reminiscent of the "Son," Will calls him.

Once, then twice, but three is the fairy tale's motif: three wishes, three nights, it feels like minutes ago that Henry fell into his bed. "Father? What time is it?" he groans, sitting up just to flop back into his pillows when he sees the darkness outside his window. "It's still night."

"It's almost four," Will dismisses. "It's morning. It was morning when you came home, as well."

"I woke you," Henry realizes. "I didn't --"

Will only shakes his head, gestures still to the door. "I knew not to worry. But put on a different tunic, we have to leave in a moment."

"You want me to join you at work?"

"We haven't talked in a while."

"We speak everyday," Henry laughs, yet nonetheless. He washes the sleep from his face in the basin, changes his embroidered sleeves for a well-used gray smock.

"You enter and exit this house at all hours and think there's nothing else I might want to know?" Will whisper-hushes.

"I tell you all," frowns Henry, looking up to Will from tugging on his boots.

"I thought there might be some details you wouldn't offer up with your mother present."

"Like _what_?" Henry shouts in this scathing whisper. "What do you think I've been doing?"

"Until three in the morning?" Will says, so discreet and deadpan. "I wouldn't think it's all stargazing and small talk."

Almost affronted, Henry just kinda stares. "That's _exactly_ what I'm doing. Just since that isn't what you were doing when you were my age --"

"There was a formal wedding planned."

"-- with caution and indecency thrown to the wind," Henry continues, 'cause his father. Christ.

"How long can two people sit and discuss the weather?" Will cracks, maybe just a little to goad his son.

"As long as they feel like sharing each other's company. Don't think mum's not told me what a stickler for decency you are; _at least once more, Miss Swann_ , my arse."

"Yes, and your mum used to worry you'd find a young lady who'd whisk you away on your own sea adventure. Was she right?"

"Sea adventure?" he repeats with a loud snort. "If I'm away to Nassau with Mister Barbossa's daughter, I'll give you a day's notice for a proper farewell, alright?"

Discretion is really something they've never mastered.

"Why not Singapore?" Will laughs. "Why not Tortuga?"

"I think she'd enjoy the history of Nassau more. Yes, maybe we'll do that," Henry decides. Grinning, he starts for his coat. "I'll start looking for passage tomorrow. That might spare a ruined reputation, should it come to it."

"If you're committing piracy to salvage your reputation," Will says, trying to hide his laugh in the quiet, "Then I think we've failed you as parents."

"No," Henry tells him plaintively, 'cause it -- it isn't that. "I'm just in love with her, is all," he murmurs, this whispering crescendo that could just ignite where he stands, dear _God_. "Should we be off?"

" _Just_ in love with her?" Will repeats, staring at him. "Just? Is that all?"

"You're going to be late."

"Henry. Has she and you discussed the future?"

"Papa, no, we discuss my past and hers, mostly, our childhoods and histories. It's been quite proper."

"Henry, I mean if you talk enough about the past enough, you'll run out of anything to discuss but the future."

"I can't very well call upon her door and say _good morning, I might have loved you for years; will you marry me?_ now can I?" Henry sighs, gesturing for his da' to just -- to just go on, as life shall. "It isn't reasonable."

"That was actually very nice," Will whispers at him, staring at him in a way that's just a smidgen Captain Jack Sparrow. "You should lead with that. Maybe with more finesse."

(Will loves finessing.)

"Great, so I'll shout it at her from a rooftop or from the gallows. What indicates finesse more than getting myself charged for a crime _punishable by death_ just to have an incredible proposal?"

"Which crime?"

"Piracy."

"I was thinking that you might cry to show her how sincere you are."

"Please," Henry scoffs. But instead of coming across as annoyed, he snorts half-through it and near doubles over. "Are we leaving, now?"

"Yes, but what of the future?" Will persists quietly, so low as to not wake the household as they tread for the door. "I did think you might like to talk out your plans before you make any decisions."

"I have no decisions to make, Father. She does not love me."

"What?" Will hisses, only a little louder than the closed door.

"Forget it, I haven't the heart to say it again."

"She's told you so?"

"Does a woman have to?"

Really, all Will has to do is remember how Elizabeth didn't even scowl at him, just gazed at him impassively as she took Norrington's arm. "I suppose not."

"She meant it, nonetheless, and her meaning was quite clear."

" _Quite_ clear leaves room for interpretation," Will says, frowning out at the gray streets ahead. "Did you misunderstand her?"

"If you must know," Henry says loudly, just without any heat as his boots scuff against the cobble. "I was reading _Twelfth Night_ out loud to her when she told me in no uncertain terms that I read without passion." But a woman whose soul was the sea; he could _feel_ it. A story about love.

"How does this mean she doesn't love you?"

"It does," is all Henry says. Of course, the instant Will sets his hand on his shoulder, Henry leans into him like he's done since he was a boy.

The last they had a rather passive-aggressive row when walking home, Will snapped at him to shut it, said _just hold my hand_ like he were still a child, and seized his hand so they might cross a busy street.

"Then why do you still venture to her home, keep her company?"

"I'm still her friend," Henry says to him, quiet. "I won't betray that on account of unreturned feelings."

\- -- - -- -

"Henry."

He's awake in an instant, blinking in the dim light of her room, shaking away the sleep that held him in subconscious thought. Like the sunlight through lace, like this realm between sleep and awake.

It's the imprint of his sleeve upon his cheek, just the faintest touch that's her fingers through his. How bright his smile is this morning against the shadows of midnight across her sleeping face, love like a prologue, like the interim, how there was never not a time, perhaps.

"You woke up," he says, smiling in this soft, soft way.

"Henry, how long have you been here?" she chooses to wonder instead, only a _little_ tentative, all things considered. Her in her undress shift and heavens only knows what her hair looks like to him -- _him_ with his arms resting atop her duvet, _him_ in a chair next to her tray like he's been here for ages, like he's been gazing at her like she's this precious thing for hours, "Henry. Why are you here?"

"Your father sent for me. He claimed to have business to attend to until -- well, ten this morning, and my mum's been away to my grandfather's; you remember me telling you."

"I think so," she frowns, pressing her cheek against her pillow. "So he settled for you?"

"He didn't want you alone," he gently reasons. "His love for you is great enough to tolerate my presence for a night. You were already asleep when I arrived, you know."

"I don't know," she murmurs, biting at her lip since that's an indirect question if she's ever heard one, an unspoken _why_. "I felt poorly, I suppose. Just overtired."

"Well," he murmurs. As he's always seen straight through her, it's less physicality, more the proximity that tinges her skin with pink. His thumb brushes against her knuckles so faintly that _oh_ , the closeness could make her sigh. "You did wake once in the middle of the night, Carina. You complained of chest pain, so I fixed you a toddy and coerced you into drinking it."

"You did?"

"With maple and sugar, I did."

"How'd you know that?" she asks him in this light-hearted marvel, curling just the slightest bit on her right side to better face him. "That's the only way I can take them."

"You aren't a _complete_ stranger to me, darling, even if you might like to imagine so," he teases. He's all dimples and a smile so beautiful it's the pain underneath her ribs, and propriety be forgotten. Gloves and parlors and chaperones be damned.

"Henry," she quietly asks him, so soft that it's already the sun of tomorrow, the brown in his eyes melted to the truth here, this romance that's the prologue to a story about a man who's killed by the hands of his _perfect_ best friend, he loves her so much. "Do you think you might ever kiss me?"

The lines of his jaw struck with surprise, dear God. "Excuse me?"

"It's an honest question," she says with that pristine inflection, that tactic that's only the makings of self-preservation yet still has her heart starting to fill with doubt. "You can forget I asked, actually."

"No," he says slowly. And in that second where he has to breathe again, he's struck by how much he might mean it.

But " _Oh_ ," is all she manage, and her laugh. It isn't bitterness that has her ribs going convex, but it hurts to, as much as two letters, hell: all he's ever sent to her, "alright. Now you can really forget I asked then, sir."

"Carina."

"You should quit using my name, actually," she decides right there, straining only a little to sit up prim and properly so she isn't going weak here, since she's losing her command on this encounter, but he's -- his damned elbows are still weighing down her bedspread, and she's -- she's -- "Can you _move_?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm trying to set an example for decency; I don't know what you can see through this shift," she snaps, just frankly considering whacking at him with her pillow. Heavens. "Honestly, I might hope to never see you again regardless."

"Me?" he affronts. "Then why on earth did you ask? What did you expect me to answer with? No? Carina," he calls her, so sweetly it's almost condescending.

"You did tell me _no_ ," she reminds him in a huff, pulling hard at her duvet.

He doesn't relinquish, though, as against it all, they're still holding each other's hands. He's just staring at her eyes like he can hold them, like the stars. Like when you love someone, you  _say_ it, "Carina. _No_ , you don't have to forget you asked, I meant."

"Well, it's much too late for that."

"What?" he honest-to-God laughs, so loud and so wonderfully that she rolls her eyes in that way he adores. "Is that so?"

"Yes."

"Then stop holding my hand."

"Yours is atop mine."

"You ought to be wearing gloves," he chides mirthfully, as if that settles it.

"Any man who proposes such intimacy should be kneeling," she frets, scrunching her nose at him. It's what she admonished him the last the context and the pretense was so smoldering that he almost had to walk away, clear his head in a garden since they're all they keep coming back to, _I'm not suggesting we marry_ since what aren't they doing but what _are_ they? He had said the ground was too cold to kneel otherwise, so her very veins.

She admits, "You might have broken my heart, Henry," so seriously that she might die.

That as red starts to unmistakably burn her eyes, he leans forward at once to press his palm against her cheek, her hair, everywhere he might otherwise kiss if this were months from now, if he wasn't pressing her hand against his breathing heart, saying, "Sweetheart, Carina, no. You had to know what I meant. Why would you doubt me?"

"You've never said," she tells him, not like she might cry, but oh. It's like her heart is catching, like the sea is making the earth an island. "You've never indicated anything of that sort, not _really_ , so I thought --"

"Carina," he interrupts, sweeping his thumb over her cheekbone so tenderly, every emotion just bleeding out into this intrinsic glance. "You just thought? You're so foolish sometimes," he lovingly swears, only a little helpless when she laughs so watery.

"I am not."

"Somedays."

"Because you make me so," she chides him. "Heaven above. I don't know what I'd have done, Henry. I would have missed you terribly." And _she will_ , she almost adds, but happiness that glints like this won't dim so soon. Not for days and days and kisses and months upon months, 'till it feels like all the ocean is a desert and Copernicus is the worst liar; it isn't the sun that has the world turning, it's _her_ who moves like constellations, like the single shooting star that's fallen in ardor, only he's still gazing upon her eyes.

"Carina."

\- -- - -- -

"Henry."

 

_"How did you know me so familiarly?" he asks again, gesturing up towards her window with the flowers in his hand. "I would have remembered meeting you formally."_

_"We did meet as children," she reminds him._

_"Have you any memory of the occasion?"_

_"Not really," she frowns. Regardless, the chapter would begin the same. One of them too ill to remember, "It doesn't much matter," she reasons._

_"You speak with such certainty," he realizes like he -- he could be remembering; time is fickle, after all, and if he's starting to recognize the way a soul starts to want, how hearts clench involuntarily and make more of mere acquaintances than the promise of a love incandescent. "I can't know for sure," he's saying, rubbing at the back of his neck in a way far too fetching for biceps, "but you might speak with more conviction than anyone I've ever met."_

 

_He grew up having inherited sea legs just as much as enunciation so articulate, each world could have welcomed him whole-heartedly and his parents wouldn't begrudge him either decision. He grew up never knowing Elizabeth taught Will to play chess so he might teach Henry, living his life in informality even when his grandfather visited, yes; no renowned dining table he was forbidden from until he was grown, no being stowed away to the nursery when visitors arrived to see his parents, no, not even when he was seven, Carina six, with the memory that would follow him for years when she laughed, oh._

 

 _I'm sorry_ , he means to say, since that's what he feels he's meant to tell her.

Why it's warranted, he isn't sure; he's less and sure of anything when it comes to her other than there's the truth of a middle and end, an epilogue to a preface that's at once this beginning of something all anew.

 _I'm sorry_ , he thinks again, but all he can manage is the most polite and half-hearted, "Go away," of his entire life.

"You can't order me about," she says like the strong-willed spitfire she is, all cheekbones that could kill him, this amused and impressed smile so pink, "do you know how many days it's been since I've come to town? I won't leave yet."

"And you -- you came to see me," he realizes just as she must, for as pink as she blushes, she looks rather defiant about it, too, like this is anything but what it is: him, essentially, the face she's sought out in a ballroom of a hundred.

"If you're really very busy, I can leave."

"I have to settle these accounts before six, but." His throat goes a little weak as he gestures to a stray chair by the shelf, tries to not just _grin_ while the rest of his face undoubtedly is. "After, I'd be happy to keep your company, Miss Carina."

"You wouldn't mind?" she asks only the slightest bit reserved. She's so ready to see the rest of the day through more than anything else, but if for as smart as she is she looks like she's being struck with common sense, like the collision theory, her atoms and her soul finding his from the start.

God, he might have been in love with her for eleven years, has started to since the first he heard her laugh. "Do you doubt me, Miss Barbossa?"

"No," she says pointedly, making this face at him that's still a little struck, mostly quite happy, to be honest. So _that_. "You are my dearest friend, after all."


	8. eight

_Before_ , when he's just a child and so is she, when she and Barbossa are these people in his house who mean he can't spend the day with his father as intended.

It's the first they truly meet, or at least, it's the first they meet with enough in his memory to see him retaining this interaction to adulthood: the mannerisms, the niceties. How enamored with her his mum has been practically since she was born -- like she's known it from the start, life's predicable ironies like fortune-telling, like.. like the world is trying to tell him  _somebody_ , the one play she pulls from the shelf.

The well-used and well-loved copy of Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ , the love story in this that he was never supposed to be here for. The parents are preoccupied with their discussion so it's just him who she asks if he minds, this six year old little thing with a blue ribbon in her hair and cheekbones he has no idea will just _kill_ him one day after they've properly come in.

"Of course not," is all he can say, helpless even then.

It isn't that he's in love, certainly not at seven even _if_ he's grown up with his father telling him tales of love like a burning wreckage. Love like all the great stories go, being pulled from a sea of drowning, taking that first breath in seconds like _can you tell me your name?_

 ~~Will Turner~~  ( _"Henry."_ )

She offers the bound pages to him expectantly nonetheless, and he's sure her brown eyes have gotten her anything she's wanted just as much as his have gotten out of situations like these, reading. With passion.

"That's a romance."

"Does it matter?" she wonders. "If you read it, you have to do the voices."

"What?"

"Papa does," she says, too polite to shrug yet shaking the play in her hand a bit. "Please?"

"Mister Barbossa reads you Shakespeare?"

"No."

Only, she's insisted it like it were obvious, as if he ought to know which stories her father reads or shares with her, so he's a little peeved, a little more curious. He's anything but subtle or truthful when he tells her, "I would if I could read," to see how she'll react, this imperious girl standing in front of him in a yellow dress.

Who doesn't start to pout or whine at not getting what she wanted like he half-expected, no. She _laughs_ so suddenly and so happily that it's a little ridiculous, how giddy his pretend ignorance makes her so much so that she's grinning still after seconds, "I can teach you, then. Easily."

\- -- - -- -

During, but still _before_ love is less a prison, more a ladder.

"Your sword is too low," he calls to her from across the yard, at once making his position across the lawn known.

And at once scaring her to _heavens help her_ , she actually shrieks in surprise while he holds his arms up quickly in surrender.

"It's only me! Carina!" he shouts, since she's got her sword held up like she might be provoked to throw it.

The next second, though, she sets her hand to her chest with this look that's almost guilty. It's like it's quite an effort for her to breathe, and while it could be the exertion or because of him, he -- he still notices. Her heaving chest and the sweat beginning to glint across her skin mercilessly.

"Henry, you startled me," she chides him. For good measure, too, she tucks a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. "I was just practicing."

"I've only been watching for a moment," he reassures her. Long enough to see her mutilate this apple tree, yet the harsh cuts into the bark at least mean her aim isn't the worst although he -- he already knew that, didn't he? She's thrown a book at him before, a solid volume that he thinks could have been a dictionary. If there's a term for _endearment_ that's the connotation of her quiet, musing smile, then goodness. _Help_.

Her surprise and her shame dissipate quickly enough considering she understands what he meant: he's witnessed her angry, poorly-executed swings and her aggravated muttering from the other side of this fence -- he's seen enough in thirty seconds to figure she would like to discuss it, perhaps, yet even if she doesn't. She could strike him down with that sword she's got, and he'd likely be appraising her intellect and her beauty, oh, in memory of.

"What do you mean?" she calls to him. One of the many things about her, instead of being frustrated at being found out, it's her curiosity and her want for knowledge that always wins. "My sword is too low?"

"Well, has someone taught you, or are you learning by imitation?"

"Why's it matter?" she asks, for just an instant rather defensive until a grin starts to lilt at her mouth.

"If someone's taught you this poorly," he trails off, grimacing like it's such a tragedy and what else can he do except offer his assistance? He unbolts the fence gate by reaching over easily enough, and though she takes a step backwards before composing herself and relaxing like instinct, he's committed to only verbal instructions and gestures for the sake of propriety.

"I've been observing the soldiers," she admits, looking up at him with this softness around her eyes. And he doesn't think of her Mister Graham; he -- he thinks how the sun makes her eyes gray and blue and green but mostly just a clear blue. If when they'd met they had began with _Twelfth Night_ , they might not have been waiting so long. "I've been practicing the best I can."

"You seemed upset," he remarks instead, careful. He looks away as if contemplating the weather so she can decide whether or not to trust him, to let him in in case she wants this just as much as he.

But no sooner has she opened her mouth then does she close it. Her eyes almost reflect an apology, this life that's a romance scripted as _almost_ \-- as always, the second has passed them by and love is truly just a riot.

When she begins to apologize, he cuts her off quickly. "Go ahead and get into stance," he orders her, 'cause he can't fault her for keeping her worries private. The sun is in her dark hair and makes her fair skin glow something soft, and he tries to not think of the almost painful tinge to her gaze. He doesn't think to tell her that the self-defense and physical protection of this sword won't do any good against this adversary she's facing, whatever mentality it might be, because she is Carina. And she knows.

She gives him this dubious look, though, with whatever intensity that just flared between them dimming to a cold crackle. "Henry."

"Get into stance," he repeats more insistently, arching both his brows. "That's a command, miss."

She smiles in a small way before complying, posing at once with her sword in her right hand and her left behind her back. The shape isn't awful; of course, he can't really see her feet under the layers of her dress's bell, so.. so that -- it must be fine, he supposes. He won't think about her ankles or her stockings or the other unmentionables he's supposed to be innocent to, but if she's attempting this within the confines of a corset, dear _Christ_ , the wonders of this woman.

"Why that face?" she asks him, frowning down at herself as if she's done some grave wrong. "Am I positioned incorrectly?"

"No," he says much too quickly, words all garbled. "Just raise your arms a bit." He's trying to think the precise opposite of cohesive, but oh, his face is burning. He swears his heart rate raises a little, too.

"Henry, if I raise my arms much higher, I'm certain my sleeves will tear."

"I doubt swordswomen duel in their evening dress," he agrees vaguely. "My mum still dresses in breeches and a tunic when she practices."

"She does?"

"Grandfather hates it, I'm sure you can imagine."

She can. And grins just to think of it: the social delicacies his mother has rearranged in her life. What wouldn't she give? "If I raise the sword much higher, I think I'd have less control of it," she says after a steady moment. "That wouldn't help me."

"You have the proportions right if your opponent is to be your height or this poor, fruitful tree, but if you're to fight a man, miss, they'll be taller targets."

Oh-so sadly, she sighs in this perfect imitation of wistful melancholia. "I must grow, then."

"You must fight smarter," he corrects, laughing softly to himself. "Keep practicing. Take another swing."

She does as directed, straightening her back when he suggests she do so, and -- to his best guess -- widening the space between her feet to give her core more balance.

"You should bend your, ah."

"My what?"

"Knees," he manages. Just barely, it seems. "Just -- not that much, _heavens_. Why are you leaning backwards?"

"I don't know," she mumbles, trying to fold her body into the right corrections. "The sword is heavy."

"You'll grow used to the weight. Lean forward when you thrust -- yes," he encourages. "Just raise your sword."

"Henry, I swear." She tries again to strike the same mark she's already dented in the tree. The sheer force almost whirls her about in half a circle, and it's more determination than frustration that has her locking her jaw.

"That was better," he appraises. His doubtful tone, however, proves he's such a romantic liar.

"What am I doing wrong?"

"I can't really see. Carina, where are your feet placed?"

"Below my knees," she teases happily. She proceeds to whack away at the tree with the worst form he's ever seen. "Your neck is going red, you know," she tells him. She isn't even looking at him when she says it, with her inflection so unassuming that her grin must be something intentional and tempting, but her posture does worsen with the observation like he'll.. help.

"Keep your left foot partially forward. Don't forget to bend your knees and keep your torso firm."

"Excuse me?"

"You're moving all over the place," he tells her, just kinda gesturing. He makes these wave motions with his arms to imitate hers, but most of her moving about is with the motions of her hips.

And she. If it's only the exertion that has her own cheeks pinking or him striding into her space with his impossibly long legs, well.

One of his rules already broken, it hurts him only a little. "May I?" he murmurs.

"May you what?"

"I'm going to help," he says, gesturing to her shoulders. It's almost subconscious, as effortless as gravity, perhaps, the tender way he's instructed her and now gazes at her: life blossoming in order and in dexterity, proximity _so_ suddenly nearer that it's her heart bleeding out onto the grass, red apples by her feet like _the heart of love, the fruit_.

Her voice just faintly breaks. "Just as well."

"Just as well," he repeats. It's almost like a dam.

She holds her breath as he steps closer to her other side, and when he moves his hand so tenderly from her elbow to her shoulder, raising the line of it just barely enough that it's purposeful but just _so_ in physicality. His fingertips this breath away from the lace edge of her sleeve, a ripple away from her collarbone.

He's so gentle as he repositions her arms. As he straightens her shoulder just barely, his touch so guiding against the bow of her scapulae, the cobbled road that's her spine going all soft curves into his hand, oh -- oh, goodness, heavens so near, her bated breath this red tint that starts to spread lower than where he's touching.

She curls inwards like her ribs are going concave and caging her in. This breathy gasp is pulled from her when his fingertips crescent along her neck, and it's like he's been burned, how he startles under the sheer blaze that's her blue eyes _staring_ at him like moths would a streetlight's flame. "Miss Barbossa, you have to keep watch of your target."

"I am."

"Heaven's sake," he swears. If he has to raise his gaze from her lips to her eyes once more like why _not_ just tell her, when you love someone, _say_ it --

"I'm trying, I meant," she amends quickly, having more composure than either of them by the grace of her own self-preservation. He's always had a harder time than she has in regards to looking away. To moving on, oh, the things he'll never know.

He tells her, "Try again," because the smirk that dimples her grin.

Her form has improved as she raises the blade this time, a great deal higher even if off-center. It takes her a moment to pull the sword from the bark like the once prolific stone, though, and as her hair sweeps over her shoulder. As she moves with just a smidgen more care and intention than she maybe otherwise would since him, _him_ with his strong jaw and broad shoulders, his sun-kissed hair.

"I beg your pardon, but are you standing with your knees apart?"

"Henry."

"For your form. I'm trying to help improve your form only," he stammers. So nonchalantly innocent that she dare not laugh.

"I think you require an anatomy class," she murmurs, so flippant he can't help but scoff himself into half-snorting in a chortle.

"Enlighten me, then. And keep your arms raised. Remember you're shorter than most men."

"My knees are measurably apart," she huffs, but come off it; it isn't like he can _see_ them. Her thighs, however.

"Raise your arms, I told you."

"Dear goodness, Henry." She amends her aim once again, taking care to move her shoulders just as he had.

"Move with more force of your body to avoid tiring your arms," he notes. He catches just the edge of her frown after, and almost unthinkingly, he reaches out once more to raise her elbow, to -- to curve her side a margin more angular. "Your opponents might be stronger," he tells her, not even looking at her this time in case he'll miss it all, "but you're quick. And a great deal more intelligent, I think."

"You think," she tacts on. It's then that he looks at her and has to wonder if it's again the exertion or how well he's getting to know her that has her cheeks blushing pink. Either way, something does shift within him.

A mountain, a cove, a shipwreck: all with her handprints all over it, this adversary she's warring against one he wishes he might kill or condemn. Intensity enough to implode, as always, lightning or common sense.

An apple freed from the tree lands mere inches from them, and somewhere in the next few tries at swordsmanship, him stretched out on the lawn with only the occasional _higher_ in way as a correction. It isn't quite the discovery of gravity, but he never offered a reason for seeking her out today, for coming to the other side of this fence like her room's balcony, like _love_.

Oh,

\- -- - -- -

heavens.

Oh, love. Oh, _Carina_.

What he never quite prepared for, never might have anticipated now that life is _after_ and hers is over, her fingerprints still on this glass and this handkerchief still smudged with her lips' red.

In a sea of drowning with grief so poignant and painful, everything blue like the soul of the sea in her and in her eyes so startlingly blue as she cried.

He didn't think of one foot in the water, then the other, at least he'd get to see her again while the sun through the waves blinded him in its sheer brilliance: this light that would soon be her, _her_ and her heart laid to rest, dirt on a grave, the muddied stains on his breeches that wouldn't wash away as easy as regret under the eyes of love, the cuts across his knees.

A universal language of agony that just ripped through him until he crumpled like the old letter in his hands. Will had to pry it from his fingers like he had to the bottle of rum, dragged his staggering body into the sunlight and into this world where she wasn't, held him up with this break in his voice that said _not like this, son._

As he helped him home and then helped him fully clothed into the tub, poured steaming water into the basin and over his head because he wasn't going to drown in alcohol or in his frozen thoughts, not like _this_ and not even for her, "Henry," Will sighs, taking him by the shoulders. What he wouldn't give for anything to take the empty out of his eyes. "You're not the one who's dead, son. You're not."

\- -- - -- -

So _during_ although not really, not quite, not when she's trying so hard to keep from looking bored and he's -- he had come here with plays in his satchel that he had called flowers for her just to see _this_ , oh, Jesus.

As quietly as he can so as to not intrude upon the both of them, he backs out of their view only a pause too slow, tries to not think how her expression as Mister Graham explains to her the fascination of a ship's rigging doesn't convey the depth of a woman in love, no.

He won't ever know that twenty minutes ago when Mister Graham called upon her door, her to-be-decided surprise (pleasure?) at him knowing her first name was because Henry told him, so that -- this misconception that's the both of them getting better acquainted with others.

Bless her, Carina stands since she must have heard him walking down the path towards the gate, and all that accomplishes is their eyes meeting over a hedge, her face almost scathing in offense. She lifts her hand to shield her gaze from the bright sun overhead, white glove and all. Even though he's wincing, trying to gesture _no_ , it's alright, really, she can entertain her would-be suitor without his interference, she's already calling his name. "Mister Turner!"

"I was leaving!"

"Turner," Mister Graham wonders aloud, squinting to see through the rose bushes, he can tell.

"You may take your seat again, miss; I dare not intrude," he insists. It's just either she's frowning or it's a trick of the sun. He can hear her shoes clicking on the wood. He can see Graham following too closely behind her, and he wonders why on earth he sought her out today of all days. "Good afternoon, Graham."

"What brings you here?"

"Please," Carina admonishes. "Will you take tea? Did you come with intent to stay?"

"Surely not," Graham decides for him, nevermind how sharply she turns to look at him.

"Well," Henry begins.

"There is more than enough tea and refreshment for three."

"Haven't you plenty of work to keep you the rest of the day?"

"A meal before you go, at least. What sort of hostess would I be otherwise?"

"Not if he's in a great hurry. He wouldn't want to impose," Graham suggests, leaning on the porch rail with enough advantage to look down on him, oh.

"Well," Henry says again, more clearly since he can almost see heat rise up from the stones it's so humid -- aggravation makes her more so, to this passive and polite recoiled state that marks a lady's true defenses refined manners. "I did come to deliver something."

"Good man, Turner," Graham appraises. "Though I feel inclined to make my presence here, as well as my reasons, known. I'm here to make better acquaintances with the Lady Barbossa without any other hinderances."

"I beg your pardon?" Carina affronts, eyes wide.

"You must have guessed, madam."

"Uh," adds Henry, intelligently. Only, he's staring at her in much the same way she's gazing at him; there's this secret, perhaps, like being each other's confidant across a ballroom, like the mirth with which her eyes shine isn't glimpses of sunlight through the clouds, blue so striking from even this distance.

She asks far too softly to be anything but sincerity sweetened, yet it's mercy he can hear her over the chatter of birds ahead. "You brought me something?"

"I did."

"What is it? A token of your relentless affection," she guesses. Her eyes crinkle at the corners in that way he recognizes they do when she's teasing.

"Excuse me?"

"On the contrary, a symbol of frustration, I think, since you're bound to be insufferable upon reading them."

"Oh, you cynic," she quips, starting to look over to Graham for some inclusion but perhaps thinking better of it. "Shakespeare?"

"Of course, you realist," Henry can't help but laugh. "I knew you wouldn't be easily satisfied with a happy ending."

"Then you're too familiar," she says, voice clipped. She can't really say why that makes her bristle, as sometimes when they start to argue, they just.. they can't stop.

While Graham doesn't pretend to be quiet in his sighing, Henry starts again for the porch. It's more idle than he might have intended. "You're too critical, Miss Carina."

" _Turner_. She's a lady."

"No, no," Carina insists, likely just since she's meant it -- it hurts a little to know he would have walked away. "It's alright. Some people will remain impossible."

"Impossible," Henry repeats.

"Yes."

"Incorrigible, you mean. And only under your influence."

"Mine?"

"Yes. Ingrate," he calls her, making for the chair opposite hers. Their knees are at once so dreadfully close. "If this is the spirit with which you receive gifts --"

"Upon your manner of criticizing me during their presentation?"

"I did not know you were so well-acquainted," Graham states rather awkwardly, still standing by the end of the porch's table.

"We're not," Henry replies.

Carina's laugh isn't much of a laugh. "My friends don't appear to be so egotistical."

"That's wonderful," says Graham. Heavens, he's almost smug at the insult.

"Neither do mine."

" _Henry_. Don't be callous."

"Don't be selfish," he tells her. "This is getting out of hand." Since he can't bring himself to quit the frustration under his words, the truth in him that isn't even angry, not for any logical or sensible reason. He undoes the buckles on his satchel quickly enough since he meant without all of the pretense: she can't figuratively have both, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_.

"Shakespeare?" Graham wonders with almost a sneer, leaning far too closely to either of them to be appropriate. "How typical."

"What?" she frowns, giving Henry a look too reminiscent of minutes ago when this preface was the evidence they keep coming back to.

"I doubt he'll amount to anything," Graham confidently predicts, leaning back into his own chair now.

It's taken just an instant for her to realize what he's said since her hand and Henry's have met over the spine of _Antony and Cleopatra_ , let it just -- _break_ like love's a rebellion, "What?"

Graham shrugs, looking to Henry with indifference. "What?"

"What?" he snaps, a little too defensively.

" _What_?" Heavens, all she can do is pinch the bridge of her nose.

Graham opens his mouth again, already making her roll her eyes. "Wh--"

"Alright," Barbossa interrupts from the door, sounding pained when he exhales. He pinches the bridge of his nose, too, so striking since his daughter's back is to him. "That's enough of that, I beg you. Come inside for lessons, Carina."

"Gladly," she calls. No sooner has she stood than does Graham, only this quiet glint to her eyes is mostly impassive. In precisely fifty-three seconds, Hector will scowl at the door and profess _boring man. At least he was handsome_ , since the beginning of the afternoon proved unbearable while the _end_.

True to fashion, she doesn't quite thank Henry for the plays he's given her. She only holds them against her chest and doesn't confess she might love him either, just declares him Valentine of Verona in a farewell, and if it makes her eyes the color of the sky and his the color of honey: time this laborious thing that stretches as it's pulled, lasts and lasts like memories spun from straw to gold, honey from a jar.

"I'll write my thoughts to you," she can't help but tell him first before she goes, the second just so imploring that it's every detail at once, the wind, the pink that dusts her cheeks since they're sorting this out; they are. Trying to work each other into the places they're struggling to create for something like hope in their lives.

"I've not read _Antony and Cleopatra_ ," she adds needlessly, her knees almost giving way when he stands before her and responds _I know_ , words silenced by Graham.

"If you're truly interested, I might suggest a book of history."

"It has the sort of ending you prefer," Henry says, _almost_ reaching out to her. "Not quite happy, but not.. not truly sad, either, Carina. I hope you'll enjoy it."

\- -- - -- -

"I can never quite be truly cross with you," Henry tells her, trying to convey the sentiment underlying it as best he can.

He means that there might not be anything but her, that sometimes, he speaks in compliments only to hear her laugh in humility, or he speaks to her in affectionate insults meant to have her cleverly returning and knocking him down from his pedestal of reason and assuredness, everything that equates the same logistics of one revolution around the sun: _light_.

More than he had ever hoped to see beyond this winter solstice, at least, but all the same.

When she speaks his name, it's like the closest they've come to holding hands. "Henry. That was an awful apology."

At once, he looks taken aback. "I wasn't apologizing."

"It sounds like you ought to have been," she tells him in a rather contradictory way.

He was right about her cheekbones is what he thinks -- never mind that the thought came at the expense of her being this six year old thing who taught him to read when he already could. In English and in French and in Latin; there was nothing ever denied to him in this world where he never had to drown himself to see one last glimpse of his father, in this world, too, where Hector knew there was no treasure not worth dying for and implored the gods and goddesses everyday, _please don't take her_ , all he had left in this world that mattered, her so much like her mother.

"Carina. I don't think we'll ever have an argument I will win," he says, making a face at her.

All she does is _laugh_ , so brightly beyond the pier that oh, goodness, why wouldn't they have the rest of their lives? "As it should be, Henry."

"Truly?"

"It's much better to think of than the sermons where it's preached a woman submit wholly to her husband. Obey his every command," she says, helpless to keep from scrunching her nose. "Dear goodness."

"Yes, I could tell you hated that sermon this past Sunday."

"It didn't do much to inspire passion."

"Oh, I know. Don't they all make marriage sound dreadful?"

"Purely for convenience."

"And wealth."

"And children," she adds easily. "Sometimes I think I wouldn't want even one, and then others, goodness. An entire houseful. At least a dozen."

"Goodness, madam, they would be children, not dinner rolls. Perhaps seven. Or eight; tables seating ten are easier to shop for."

"Then nine," she decides primly. She fluffs the lace at her sleeve's edge so she won't have to look at him for a moment, just nevermind it for all the good it does. She can hear the charm in his smile without seeing it.

"That would be eleven, dear."

"Or ten," she corrects, threading her fingers through his with just the slightest touch. "Don't question it."

"See what I meant? That's illogical. But I've no chance of arguing with you, have I?"

"Oh, Henry," she softly laughs, shaking her head. With the wind, he gets a face full of her dark hair, but the next instant, it's the physicality that's had them moving towards each other for years. Gravity like the press of his hand against her back, just one touch and she might crumble, if _this_ is why Icarus fell to the sea when tempted by the sun.

Hearts are more things with wings than breastbones, yes, but light catches on the chain around his neck all the same, adorns that ring resting over his heart with enough light to make them both the star bodies of constellations, love like one person acting as a sole point of steadiness in all the Galaxy, love like perhaps, possibly, the first she had said _yes_ and he had taken her into his arms much like this -- the heart and the hope, the love as all stories go.


	9. nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to type _gentle_ , but autocorrect changed it to _Hector_ , and I am sad. 
> 
> xox, loves.

"Oh, please," Carina mutters, making _that_ face that has Hector cursing God for giving him a daughter instead of a sensible, obedient son, has Jack rather pointedly turning his attention to the green brocade curtains. 

"Fine embroidery," he says, idle. 

"You will do as you're told," Barbossa orders. "If I want you to stay away from Turner, I'll --"

"Lock me inside my room?" she finishes for him, grinning at the wicked thought. "Papa, please."

"Put your foot down, Hector. Your right one," Jack clarifies kindly. 

"You're to heed my command without question," he huffs. Because he has spoiled Carina, given her everything she deserves, yes, material and otherwise, but his headstrong girl does think she is entitled to him what no one is allowed to besmirch his name with. Disrespect.

"Without question? That hardly seems like a beneficial relationship."

"A _beneficial relationship_? Girl, you are my daughter. Don't pretend to be so clever."

"Tell her, Hector," Jack preens, stepping aside with his arms crossed so she's got to disapproving fathers to frown at now instead of just the one.

"And you, sir, don't act so demeaning. Your leg can't support the sarcasm."

"Carina!"

"Oh, my dear," Jack Sparrow gasps, half-doubling over in this fit not to laugh. Quite comically, he takes just one step in this parlor's fray, and it puts him closer to the girl instead of Barbossa. 

Without much surprise at all, Hector rolls his eyes, collapses on the ivory couch. "Don't you want to stay here with your father? Forever?" he asks, pulling a ridiculously elaborate lace handkerchief from his sleeve. He waves it pitifully: a white flag of truce. "You'd leave me in my old age?"

"Papa." She crosses the room to where he's making a fuss, then sits near his feet, her skirts swishing all the while. She holds gently onto his hand with both of hers, and oh, goodness. "No matter how mournful you act, you know you can't dissuade me."

"I know that quite well, mind," he gripes while bloody Jack Sparrow simpers. 

"You taught her all those fancy words. Brought it on yourself, you did," he states plainly. "Should have raised her to be illiterate. Then she wouldn't write to the brat."

"Uncle Jack," she scolds though she doesn't turn her gaze from her father. "Why is it you don't like him?"

"There's no _particular_ reason," Hector supposes, grimacing. "He looks too much like his father."

"And?"

"I don't trust the eunuch," Jack helpfully adds, staring at the drapes again. "Any eunuch, really. What on earth do they want then since it isn't their obvious biological inclination?"

"What?"

Jack makes a cross face at the both of them. "What do you mean, _what_?"

Her nose scrunches up in her confusion. "What?" she repeats.

"Have Turner boy explain it to you."

"Jack!" Barbossa practically shouts. He's going to develop an aneurysm, he swears it. "Not in front of Carina."

"Oh, please," he mocks, just as petulant as she had moments ago. "Dear, I'm sure your mummy would have given you a better account of the details and whatnot than he did. I'm partially convinced he only did it the once."

" _Jack_."

"Heavens, you both," she starts, all she can to maintain her composure and not chortle. "I'm going to be late meeting Henry."

"Carina, treasure," her papa calls her. Begging and quiet and doubtful. "Can't you wait until tomorrow, at least? What's one more day?"

She draws backwards and stands, but as that has her looking down at her father which.. which is never, ever right, no; she sits next to him on the settee instead. "It's nothing to you, I know."

"Carina."

"We're going to have supper, papa. With his family. Every time I'm set to meet him, why, you act as if we'll run off to marry."

"No," he glowers, looking skyward. "You'll be marrying over my dead body."

"Much longer, Hector, and it'll be her dead body," Jack mutters. 

Carina's the only one to laugh. Bright and -- God forbid -- almost delighted since Jack loves her enough to _at least_ pretend to be smiling as her father just. Just _can't_ the days dramatic irony is the making of his own fragility. "What are you doin' here, Jack?"

"Providing our dear girl with moral guidance before she frolics into the exciting new world of courtships and promiscuity."

"Has he told you anything helpful?"

"To blacken Henry's eyes if he touches me."

"That's right," Barbossa mutters. "That's sensible. Nice work, Jack."

Sparrow honest-to-God bows. "The pattern work on these draperies is truly an artistic thing. Did you sew them yourself, Hector? Carina, lass, this is your diversion; spit, spot. I wonder if you could tell me why you chose this shade of fabric instead of another?"

"I'll be careful," Carina assures them both. Truly, that was all the permission she needed to start hurrying off. She knots her shawl around her shoulders and begins for the parlor's door -- not before pausing to grin, though, and wave while her father looks on stoically.

"Smile, mate. She's _enjoying_ herself."

"The doctor said that she needs rest," Barbossa reminds him tiredly.

"So you'd have her confined to her bed all day and night? Until she dies?"

" _If_ , Jack."

"You're not acting like this is a what _if_ , Hector," Jack says. His sigh rather echoes. 

But outside, Will steps down from the wagon so he can help Carina up. He teases, "He thought you had changed your mind," inconspicuously but seriously enough that she knows he must mean it. He has to. 

Even as Henry laughs too quickly, as he reaches for her right hand to pull her the rest of the way up. It's cold hands and a warm heart, fresh air like heaven above to her lungs, and embarrassed or not -- truly worried or not. His dark eyes do crinkle at the edges, and he looks over her head to his father when he takes his place on the seat, too, makes this petulantly _adorable_ scrunched up face she could swear she's seen before. 

"Maybe I was only a little worried," he gives in. And all the better for it, twilight does such a lovely thing to his smiling face. 

"Aye," Will agrees. 

Except that curve of his brow bone and the way he looks pointedly to the left is comedy gold. 

Before they start off, he passes her the reins with a, "Carina, would you like to manage the team?" like it might be liberty in more ways than one. All over again, it's so easy to let her heart feel more like a thing with wings instead of a hindrance. When they end up barreling down the road, shouting and laughing, well. There was never a question of her being welcomed into the Turner family.

\- -- - -- -

"Good Lord," he swears, pressing his hand to his heart just in case. Any second now, he's sure to feel it cease breathing; he _told_ her to be careful with that pistol, he gave her a lesson in the basic components of safety but her _will_.

Her glint of resolution so pristine that she's precisely the sort of confidant that Aristotle might have wanted, that Socrates would have praised, that give them a century ago, a growing settlement in the New World of freedoms and opportunities but still mostly quite _not_. 

Carina laughs like she's never quite had a reason to before, like its this wonder he doesn't understand yet -- how she views life as this precious thing due to it's fleetingness in her eyes and the result of her own mortality. Sometimes she laughs so bright and bubbly that she's giggling with all her heart in _wonder_ at something being humorous, almost as if she's quite forgotten the sensation of the logic, like it's a little bit of a miracle that anything can be funny. 

When she grins, he thinks it obvious that a smile this beautiful is something they could have burned her at the stake for; how can someone be so incandescently charming that it's his soul partially aflame? With two sinners purged on a pyre and waiting for the call of damnation: his heart still in one of her hands, the rest of her life in the other. The boundless thought that she can have both in this probable, cohesive way. 

_During_ their romance, inbetween the dueling lessons he gives her in exchange for nothing much, just the euphoria of her company so akin to the feeling of sailing or free-falling, love like a quickened heartbeat, like a heart attack, like his heart surrendering to this utter riot wholly encompassed of love -- Shakespeare was bloody right about _all_ of it, and it might kill him. 

Just how blue her eyes are under this great, open, boundless sky. 

How she's not as careful with her aim as she might think, oh, she might genuinely kill him; send his body to sea if he goes. "Miss Barbossa," he begins, but as that's imperatively too formal, he grimaces. "Carina."

"Yes?"

"Where are you aiming, madam?"

"At the target," she answers cheerfully. Bless her, she has him so done in with adoration. 

"Yes, magnificent, but the target I arranged for you, or have you claimed your own?"

"Henry."

"It's an innocent question," he defends, sure to keep his seven paces back just as she instructed. 

Not that he can blame her, as last time -- last time. He might never have handled anything as fragile as her rib bones, her shoulder blades. The curve of her cheek. 

"Alright," she ventures after a pause. Instead of giving into annoyance like even the best gentleman would, she has this way to her that manages to keep calm and curious. Formal and inquisitive, yes, to the point where he frets ever not having an answer to any of her questions, but calm nonetheless. She might be life's student until she dies, but such a marvel -- life hasn't claimed either of them yet. "You can tell me of everything I'm doing wrong."

"Not much. Though the pistol is loaded."

"I know," she smarts, grinning despite herself. "How would I learn otherwise?"

"It'll still shoot someone straight to hell," he says, crossing an arm behind his back. "It'll leave a hole twice as large. I think I must demonstrate proper etiquette first. You'll have to pardon me; I've never been a teacher."

"Nonsense," she claims. "You're doing splendidly. But who taught you?" It's either her blessed common sense or observation. She knows enough to aim downwards when not making for a target.

"My father thinks he did, but Jack beat him to it."

"By how soon?"

"Three years," he laughs quietly. "I was insistent on leaving to become a pirate. He taught me all the essentials -- all of which he led me to believe were of the utmost importance to captains. Swimming, diving, swearing, shooting. Drinking. I'm none too proud of that one."

Almost sympathetically, almost ready to laugh. She takes just a step closer to him by gravity's own design -- these stars. Oh, heavens, it might be the most innocent thing in the world, how as he might reach for her, she almost does, too, making to reach for him. "He taught me to tie proper knots."

"For rope? For a ship's rigging?"

"For knitting," she chortles, turning just a smidgen pink. "With yarn. I could barely manage to tie ribbons in bows behind my back. Knots were hopeless, so he -- it isn't the same," she murmurs, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

"That's charming," he assures her. "I imagine he would be more cautious around you."

"Well, he's certainly never lied to me," she says. She turns left just as he turns right, three steps in each direction so they've just barely met (three years ago in the general store, four years prior that in church, if but she could remember her infant eyes set on his toddler face, if from that first instant, love incandescent) in hesitant, overreaching splendor. They barely graze elbows as they pace opposite ways -- God, the pistol might as well be a pink rose. 

"What would he have lied to you about?"

"My mother, I suppose."

"Can I -- may I," he corrects, frowning at himself, "ask?"

"Perhaps we ought to.. not forget why we're here," she suggests instead with her perfect inflection, oh, no. 

"Of course."

"How we've digressed, Mister Turner."

"It's practically criminal," he agrees, not meaning it at all. "Alright. Remember to keep your arms steady. Try to not let the force of the blast affect your aim. Take your shot, madam."

\- -- - -- -

"Mum?" Henry calls. He's checked the kitchens, the parlor. The study, as well, but instead of heading directly to his mother's dressing room, he stops by his parents' open bedroom door. "Mother?"

"No," Will answers from the bed, lifting one arm in greeting. "Just me."

"Oh," Henry says. Then shrugs, crosses the fine rug so he's collapsed on the mattress next to his da' instead. "You'll suffice."

"You're kind," Will quips, turning his head to look at him. "What do you need your mother for?"

"I was going to ask her to chaperone since I -- I don't want to ask Grandfather," he explains, making a face at him. "He's ridiculous." 

"Ask Hector."

"He hates me. And besides, she hasn't an aunt or some such to chaperone her activities. I'm told that's how it usually goes."

"You might've asked me," he says, perhaps only the slightest bit disappointed. "I would love to meander about at all hours of the night in search of the stars."

"Father."

"I'm just saying," Will just says, turning his head forwards to stare at the ceiling. "Where to this evening?"

"Another meeting," he answers. "Legislature and the like. I would have asked you, but I thought you'd be working. Why are you home?"

"Henry," Will patronizes with a sigh. "Sweet child. Dear son."

"What," Henry quips dryly. He isn't quite looking at anything. "Are you dying?"

"I'm here waiting for your mother," he says like he's joking. He just -- he's _not_.

It's six awkward seconds of them staring at each other before agonizingly slowly, scarcely able to so much as breathe, Henry gets himself off the bed. "God's sake, it's the middle of the day," he whispers, agonized. Scarred for life, truly distraught, what in the _globe_. "Now? Should I leave?"

"Well."

"If you two don't act your age, I swear," Henry starts, 'cause just. Just go ahead and crucify Jesus, Judas. Heavens. "Last week at that Martins's daughter's debutante ball, don't think I didn't see the pair of you disappearing into the gardens."

"Well --" Will tries again. His face breaks into a grin, since Henry, he's never tried so hard not to laugh. 

"Forget it. I'll accompany her alone."

"Without a chaperone?"

" _That_ scandalizes you?" he snorts. "That in this entire afternoon. I'm going," he chides him, not even a whole heart to glower. "Is it appropriate to wish you enjoy the rest of your evening?"

"Well."

"No," Henry decides for him, shaking his head never mind the technicality.

"It wouldn't be inaccurate, son."

" _No_."

"I expect to hear how your evening went, as well!"

\- -- - -- -

It -- it was a misunderstanding, is what it was. After Carina was born when she cried and cried and wouldn't take anything, not a nurse maid, not milk soaked in a handkerchief, nothing, and was too little still for mashed vegetables and the like. 

Nothing seemed to work, and this squalling, sobbing baby with his eyes and the best parts of Meggy, even then. It was Elizabeth who thought to warm the milk first, and it was Jack who looked like he might well cry when Carina began to drink since Hector already was. 

Maybe then it was pride. Someone thinking they knew what they didn't; Jack had made a tasteless joke, but what he meant was he loved that girl already. What he meant was _aye, mate, all treasure is worth dying for_ only _especially_ when it's a wee baby worth so much more than _what?_ Jack asked. The coppers he paid that night?

He knew Sparrow didn't mean anything by it, not really, for who else had wept with him, kicked up dirt with him, swallowed half the sea and threw it all back up like sand burning a throat like ale like rum. Who had taken care of his daughter when he could scarcely move away from Margaret's bedside; who else would love Carina as much? She might never know a mother, but love and blood and water is another father in the making: the quiet bit of pride in Jack's voice when he would claim Carina as partially his. 

Only as thoughtlessly as ever, perhaps unable to help herself, really, since she's always been just a little better than everyone. Elizabeth asked before she thought better against it, "Truly, was that it? A few coppers?"

And he didn't deign it necessary to discuss Meggy with her, not when grief had already made him bitter and angry and volatile, all the worse things only steeled by his daughter. 

It isn't fair to hold that grudge and judge her son for her unthinking callousness when he loves the entire Turner family, he _does_. But he hasn't quite forgotten it all the same.

\- -- - -- -

"Grandfather, stop a moment," says Henry. 

Nevermind he's corralling Will's wagon instead of making this trip with Henry in a fine carriage like he'd surely prefer; dear goodness, Henry loves Weatherby Swann, he does. But as he stops squinting at the back of a figure on the street ahead to see why they aren't slowing yet, he sees his grandfather's pursed mouth, his slightly snobbish, crinkled nose. 

"Must we?" he answers with a huff.

"Yes, I know that woman."

" _That_ woman? Henry, she looks common."

"What?" He laughs, 'cause bloody hell. When he realizes Carina Barbossa might be the wealthiest debutante in town. Hold the wedding invitations, give him back his soul one word at a time. 

His grandfather gives him the same long-suffering look of his childhood. "What if we're to be robbed?"

"Oh, my goodness," he whispers, gravely. "That's unlikely, alright?"

"Most certainly _not_ alright! You're in my care when you're with me. Now sit back down before you fall to your death!"

It's because he's Will Turner's son that he does -- sits, mind you. With his ankles crossed and everything, hands folded, but it's just that he's Elizabeth's son, too, for he's standing again within seconds, arms raised like he might throw one, "She's walking faster than we're moving."

"Your mother never tried to throw herself from a moving carriage," Weatherby just has to complain, urging the two dark steeds on with a flick of the reins. "I swear it, I'm having a fit of apoplexy."

"Oh, Grandfather. Please," Henry frowns, biting hard at his lip. "Steel yourself. That's the woman I'm to marry one day."

"Is it?"

"Perhaps," he reasons, and he'd figure for how adamant his grandfather is towards safety, he wouldn't gape at him so and leave the road unattended. "You're wont to live to see it if your nerves get the better of you." 

"If you would sit down, you could introduce us properly; I wonder where she's headed? We might be making for the same destination."

"Grandfather, you mustn't wait for me. Tell Father where I'll be."

"Without a chaperone? _Henry_ ," he calls. Jesus, he half-seizes when Henry steps from the wagon and leaves him riding there all alone. Headstrong, foolish boy! Takes after his mother, you know. He's done the best he can. 

"Miss Barbossa," Henry starts. 

To catch up to her, he jogs just a few paces up the crooked, sloped stones, only slows when she turns a little too slowly to be regular. "Mister Turner," she nods. 

"Miss Barbossa, your.. your sleeves," he realizes, struck. "Is that --"

"It isn't my blood," she quickly interrupts. "I was at the clinic, and this man was --"

"You wish to be a nurse?"

"No," she frets slowly, stopped completely now on this pavement where it's as if _sometimes_. His face still appears to her feverish and delirious; the physician still says he might not live, and their beginning is just their ending in reverse -- keep the dramatic irony, keep his eyes from being so brown back do imploring, oh, dear goodness, " _no_. I only wanted to see some goodness in the world and help and -- go on, then." 

"Beg pardon?"

"Laugh."

"I'd never," he swears, so sincerely that he has to mean it: every single word he's ever spoken to her. "Though I admit you don't seem the sort."

"Do you not think me selfless enough." 

Too late, he's caught onto that aggrieved pitch in her voice, the frowning knit of her brows together. "No," he tries slowly, "no, although I might have wondered at you having the patience."

"To tend to the sick? Heavens," she huffs, starting off rather quickly down the street. "I must get home."

"I didn't mean that," he says, stepping after her so just _barely_ , they're side by side in the most inconspicuous tense. They'll discuss it one day, the wanting of religion. "I meant the patience for prayer. To my understanding, women are at bedsides for kind words and a final peace. I didn't think you'd want to live so passively."

"So you presume I'm too vain," she interprets, unable to help herself, really. It's _Much Ado About Nothing_. It will be a fire she won't be able to douse, the fact that they can't woo peaceably. Dear goodness.

"I'm not sure what I meant, now. You still don't seem the sort."

"You don't seem all that much like a bookkeeper, honestly. I expected you to be dull," she says, glancing up at him in this light like _why_ , how can anyone's smile seem so soft?

"Thank you, I believe," he grins too broad. "I expected you to to a smidgen more snobbish, if we're to be honest."

"Oh?"

" _Oh_ ," he repeats, since that hand she pushes through her mess of her pulled-back hair is far too pretty for slummed down streets and that threadbare apron. Bloodstains like they aren't yet winter in spring like dreams might soon be tangible; lay him to rest, have her bite at her lip since he's spent most of today in the sun, she can tell. 

His confounded _freckles_ so beautiful in the shadowed light of this evening street. "I might have thought you to be a bore," she admits as elusively as she can manage like it's nothing at all.

To his credit, he's another soft, choice laugh. "And I, you a spoiled child. But we were wrong. Do you spend much of your time at the clinic?"

"Not really."

"Then what do you do with your time?" he asks, genuinely wanting to know. Out of habit, he reaches for her elbow to assist her as they change streets, but as soon as his hand grazes her sleeve, she draws away with a tired, sighing look. 

"Mister Turner, I _can_ manage walking across the street without your assistance." 

"I was only trying to help."

"Yes, but you don't have to," she reasons. Since this is the _before_ , the period where they aren't love yet like the last star in the sky before sunrise. There's no moon tonight, so this darkness. It's misunderstanding just as much as anything else: the eye contact across a ballroom. The insults and barbed pleasantries that came with it. 

"I meant no offense."

"I still doubt you're as chivalrous as you try to seem."

"Try? Your father says that trying implies success," he smarts, still following her down this street and left -- he had presumed she'd be venturing right. "You think I'm charming, then."

"Chivalrous," she corrects, looking at him in a way that's almost like she isn't. 

He furrows his brows. "Gallant."

"Insufferable."

"Heroic, you mean."

"I meant humble," she _almost_ laughs, so close to almost giving into this. "I'm too tired to argue."

"It's banter, I think," he grins so, so bright. "It might be something akin to Shakespeare. Or would be, rather, if you didn't abhor me."

" _Much Ado About Nothing_."

"Pardon?"

"I spend a great deal of my time at home," she answers finally, still too slow. "I -- Father rests easier when I'm at home, so everything I do with my time is usually there."

"Except when you're acting as an angel of mercy to the ill," he says. And even now, she isn't quite sure he remembers. His gaze on her is more one of bemusement. "Or at the bookshop or general store."

"Or church," she agrees. She lifts her skirts just a bit to make the steps easier, dark blue almost black in the night. "Scarcely anywhere else."

"I imagine you've been at other social galas and very well not dancing at those, too."

"Not often."

"Well, I might like to see you at the next," he supposes, his voice trailing off delicately. "I might claim your dance card."

"My house is just down this road," she quickly diverts, inhaling so deeply like it could be the whole sky in her lungs. "I can manage the rest of the way alone, but thank you for escorting me this far. Though you didn't ask if you might."

The gentle scolding doesn't quite make him bristle -- really, he just goes a little tender. "You didn't send me away either, madam."

"No, I didn't, did I?" she realizes. Then with more contrition, enough to lock her jaw the slightest bit, she looks up at him with this woman's sort of courage. "I'm sending you away now. I can make the rest of the way alone."

"How chivalrous would I be if I abandoned you?"

"Mister Turner --"

He doesn't even think. "I would very much like to speak with you again," he tells her. He has to consciously remind himself to unclench his fists, his teeth. Breathe since boldness may be disreputable but her, _her_ who he might want to get to know forever. The rest of his life is _if only_ waiting to stain pages red. 

"I might, as well," she murmurs, so quietly it's practically this secret thing. "I don't mind it as much as I thought I would."

"Thank you." Heavens help him, he isn't sarcastic at all; Henry Turner might be the best person in all the world, and there she'll be. 

"Good night then, Mister Turner."

"And you," he says, almost reaching for her hand. _Almost_ , it would be so different if he had, "I'll call on you tomorrow," he promises.


	10. ten

In this seaside town, this stationary port, under the perpetually gray sky and the eternally cumulative clouds, she dreams of a place where beginnings are new and endings are always happy; she dreams of him, William, and his creative mind, his penchant for the comedies that demand the happiest of endings with weddings and songs and dances and shipwrecks: Viola. What wouldn't she give to be her, to have her silly problems instead of her dreaded own?

"I wasn't expecting to see you," says Henry, taking off his hat politely, excitedly, bowing just so as if this were a ballroom, as if all they had to communicate by were glances and dances and hushed whispers instead of this crowded street and all its pretense with him looking as he always does. Utterly devastating.

He's lighting up brighter than the muted sun cares to in the skyline, and those confounded dimples in his cheeks, God, it's everything in her to remain upright and stalwart. It's a fight to keep from reflexively petting her hair or pinching her cheeks to be pretty. "Yes," is all she can manage, somewhat awkwardly. Then, "I had business in town," she forces herself to say. She's a confident and educated woman, she must remember. She is shining gold. She is eternal. She is charismatic and composed and cunning and so wonderfully blinded by him; she's just a girl, and he's --

\-- just a boy. Reaching up to her from his fevered delirium, standing before her now, still smiling the most radiant smile ever bestowed upon a human bean. "Imagine my good fortune, Miss Carina, to find you, then. Is your father accompanying you?"

"No, he was busy," she excuses, watching him look around and then back to her, a slow, taut lifeline that pulls her in. "I only have one more stop to make before I must return home."

"Would you terribly mind if I came with you?"

"To my home?"

"No, no," he actually blushes, "to your errand. That is, might I accompany you?"

"To look at ribbons? And handkerchiefs?" Half-apologetic and partially accepting his excuse to turn back, she says, "I'm sure you're much too busy for that," just to give him the chance to change his mind.

"Hardly," he laughs, all body. "Frankly, Miss Carina, I've listened to you read from a dictionary. There isn't much I wouldn't do in your company. Shall we?"

"All right," she concedes, like this matter was very trivial, indeed, such an imposition. It makes him laugh again, though, and goodness, she finds herself clenching his offered arm too tightly when he does. "What has you in town this afternoon, Mister Turner?"

"Miss Victoria Cheever. We've just had afternoon tea."

"How lovely," she says, actually struggling to breathe as she steps once, twice, solders on, sea foam against the current, wind caught in her hair.

"It was. How are you handling Pythagorean's teachings?"

"Miss Cheever's lovely, as well."

"She is," he agrees, pausing their stroll to the general store to peer into a window of evening gowns. "How talented is this seamstress."

"Quite," she manages, so remarkably casual that it almost hurts her pride. "I've benefited from her tricks of clever stitching."

"Very astute attention to detail, I find."

"Do you find yourself closely examining ladies' gowns often?" she asks a tad too biting, looking away from his reflection to the image of the shop behind them.

"On occasion," he says, giving her an odd look. "Your gown that evening was very pretty. Did she design it?"

"Honestly," she says, releasing his arm with a short huff. "No, she did not."

"Why are you cross?"

"My gown was of French design."

"Oh? It was lovely."

"Spare me your small talk, Mister Turner."

"If I've offended you, Miss --"

"Not me," she interrupts, proudly setting her shoulders and raising her chin in meanness. What is he go her, really, besides a handsome face and a good heart? "I imagine you've insulted Miss Cheever, though."

"Have I?" His laugh, warm as it is, isn't very kind, now. "How so?"

"Were you assuming direct injury to me, then? That isn't very nice, Henry," she tells him, her voice edging on this broken shard of softness, this fragment she's trying to contain before her ribs splinter. "I thought --"

"You're always thinking," he accuses of her, irritably taking that half step forward she placed so delicately between them. It's the wall of bloody Jericho. "And rarely are your delusions ever correct, Carina."

"Delusions? I beg your pardon, but it wasn't delusional of me to consider that --"

"You hardly give a man a chance to navigate a situation before you overtake it with your suspicions."

"This isn't the ocean, Henry. You can't navigate this. What, have you a paddle?"

"Incorrigible girl."

"Shall I rig the mast?"

"Impossible woman, behave yourself!"

"Oh, go walk a plank. I'm leaving. Good day. Good-bye."

"You're going the wrong way, miss," he says, lingering for just a moment, long enough to decide to tear down this barrier between them brick by brick.

"I said, good day," she calls over her shoulder, walking quite confidently alone for all of the three seconds it takes him to match her stride. "Henry, honestly."

"Are you jealous, honestly?" he asks her, taking her hand to set upon his arm. Quite like a pompous git, he smiles and nods politely to their passersby on the street, offers quite the charming, "Good day," and earning the couple's sweet reminiscence of twenty years prior.

"Me? Jealous of her?"

"Yes."

So she won't cry, which -- she won't, of course not, not while it's day anyway -- she laughs. Twice. It's so awkward that, bless him, he looks away.

He's really just grinning at nothing, though, a tad too enamored to pretend at nonchalance. "Yes," he repeats.

"Unfathomable."

"I agree."

"She's ridiculous."

"She's a kind young woman," he agrees, stopping their stroll in front of yet another shop: general goods. "She drew my likeness. She's very talented."

"I didn't know."

"Neither did I," he says.

"Well?"

"Yes, miss?"

"Are you marrying her?" she asks sharply, meeting that slow, deliberate slant of his eyes to hers upon the glass.

"Not just this second, no."

"I would object, you know," she tells him before she can help herself.

He looks to her in earnest, so composedly still. "Then you aren't invited. I'll have you thrown out."

"That's unkind. We're good friends, you see, and I only wish for your happiness."

"As do I. I'm selfish," he quips. Then, in a tirelessly practical manner, he gestures to the sack of flour shown through the shopping window. "They've increased the price."

"Have they?" Thoughtfully, she nods as if it matters to her -- any of this -- and silently applauds her bravado, her resolve that is a woman unattached and willfully glad instead of heartbrokenly devastated. "So it seems."

"Are you enjoying your outing?"

"Not particularly," she lies.

"Me neither. Do you suppose it will rain?"

"I imagine so. Mister Turner?"

"Miss Carina?"

She exhales softly. She thinks of how lightheaded she is, and she tries to find the small solace that lies with the knowledge that they are both star bodies and have yet to be burnt on an enflamed pyre of waiting. "You're practically holding my hand."

"I hadn't noticed," he murmurs, but that soft brush of his thumb across her knuckles, oh. "Do you mind?"

"I suppose not," she manages.

"How friendly of you."

"Heaven above," she swears. "Oh, my goodness. All I want is a handkerchief, Henry."

"Pardon," he says. And like they've shifted from acquaintances to smitten, they've moved the small distance apart from beloved to strangers. The glint of the sun beyond the clouds, it's burning her eyes. He is, with how nonchalantly he clasps his arms behind his back and turns toward her. "The price of sugar has increased, too, did you know?"

"No."

"Taxes," he says, like that explains that. Economics.

"Of course."

"Why would you object?"

Her brows furrow. "To paying taxes?"

"No," he says impatiently, infringing upon this panicked, impending edge. "If I married someone else, why would you object?"

"I -- didn't say I would," she slowly considers, straining to remember. "Only her."

"Miss Cheever, then."

"That's what I said."

"'Not anyone?"

"That's what I didn't say."

"Perhaps it's what you meant?"

"It can't be of consequence to you, Mister Turner," Carina says, so defensively that he's misinterpreted her caution as defiance. "I was unaware you had an understanding with her, but now I know. We can be merely good acquaintances now. It's best."

After a long moment of just his staring at her, waiting, he nods.

And he keeps nodding, and he murmurs, "All right," quite solemnly, and he turns to leave her there on the street where there was her and him but now exists only a misunderstanding by heavily-laced subtext, only -- he can't leave her, now.

It's begun to rain.

"Come here," he tells her at once.

"What?"

"Let me carry you." God's sake, he puts on his hat just to pick her up.

"What?" she repeats. "No, no, you will not," she laughs, this innocent, preposterous, fearful laugh he hates just now, hates more than anything, "Henry!"

"Shut your beautiful mouth," he says tenderly. He's so heartbreakingly gentle when he lifts her into his arms that it hurts -- how warm he is hurts because he's going to make her feverish.

"Put me down this instant," she commands him.

"I will," he says, gripping her tighter against him and practically shouting now to be heard over this downpour. "Quit trying to kick me!"

"Put me down now, or I'll scream!"

"Carina," he sighs, so soft against her wet, rosy cheek. "Please." A few more steps, and there, just outside a shop, there's a crate he sets her down upon. Now a safe foot above the swampy muck of the streets, he holds onto her until she's balanced, until her hand atop his hand on her waist reminds him to act.

"You could have taken me inside. I could have taken myself inside!"

He only shrugs out of his coat, though, and offers it to her in silence. When she obediently takes it and uses it to protect her head from the rain, he tells her, "I'll return," and turns away without another word.

In the few minutes before he returns, she begins to think her father is right. The cut in her forearm from being bled last Wednesday hisses and screams as her wet sleeve sticks to it, and Henry is the only who can't see how sick she is, how little time she has left to be.

He returns with his grandfather's carriage, of course he does, and steps back out of it to assist her. He tosses his coat upon the ground for her to walk on, and then oh, the gallantry of him, the way he clenches and unclenches his fists when he's sitting beside her in intrepid, dry silence, _oh_.

She wants to curse him but instead hears herself quietly thank him. "For saving my gown," she clarifies, which, aside from being wet, is still a spotless light blue. No mud to sully her, just him, muddied and drenched and -- and divine, for without his coat, the rain has thinned his white shirt to threadbare and permeable.

Oblivious, though, proof he doesn't know how he affects her, he does his best to wipe the wet from his face. "You look very pretty today," he says as explanation. "It wouldn't do to have your nice dress ruined."

"I don't suppose you consider me any prettier than Miss Cheever."

"Carina."

"Henry," she snaps in the same tone he used. "I can't understand."

"All I did was drink tea," he states, raising his hands in vain. "That's all."

"And considered a marriage to a woman your grandfather proposed, I assume. Is that right?" she wonders, wanting to turn away to look out the window but unable to, for his eyes --

"That's correct, Carina."

Perhaps it's the honesty that stings. "The grandfather who's spoken against every choice you've made for your own happiness. Why, Henry? Why would you try to appease him?"

"You can't understand," he says, smiling as if to endear her, but God, no.

"Don't patronize me, Henry Turner. Don't you dare."

"Well, what if I had fallen in love with her?"

"What?"

As if he hadn't heard her quiet, broken whisper, he continues, "What if, upon joining her in the garden, my soul decided she was its half and truest happiness?"

"Please," she means to scoff, unaware that she desperately sounds begging.

"Could I refuse my grandfather a meeting with a woman whose family could spare him colossal embarrassment purely because I didn't want to? Could I subjugate him to ruin because of spite and a cold heart? No, miss, so I went only to verify his hopes would bear no fruit. Love didn't triumph today, Carina," he says, deadened as iron, so cruel that his chattering teeth from the cold make him sound as if he's hissing. "Today, love proved that those who are cruel are served their comeuppance, and it's no picnic, dear; it's hell to watch a place burn to the ground, did you know?"

"Henry," she says.

"Why wouldn't I try?" It's the bloody wall of Jericho. Now that he's given honesty a try, just like daring to hold onto her hand, he can't stop, not even for patience. "Do you suppose it would be easy to betray my blood purely because of its history? This isn't what legacy should connote, Carina. I did have a say, if you must know, but since you have me pegged as a spineless, pliable puppet, I'm not sure how much it will please you."

"Henry," she tries once more, so fragilely sorry.

"Don't say my name like that, Carina," he warns her. "Like we're more than just rather good acquaintances, all right, don't speak to me like that. We are friends. It has been made quite clear, miss," he says like he's begrudging her his time, " _Quite_ clear."

"Yes," she faintly whispers. She still feels like she's caught in the rain, though, like her soul is still trying find its way through each rain drop to its whole being once more. "We are friends, Mister Turner."

"Yes," he exhales, feeling like a damned hurricane.

"Yes," she repeats, emphatic.

And before he can articulate what that look in his dark eyes transcends to, she musters up her bravery to bid him a good day before hurrying from the carriage to her front door. She won't see him next until she's sick in bed and hates him, _hates_ him in a way only women can understand, but then again -- he feels it, too, his contingency.

He won't consent to marry anyone who doesn't make him feel like that look upon Carina's face.

.

Henry is sixteen, and he is tall, freckled, devil-may-care, and blushing. He is sixteen and invincible, intelligent, intoxicated by probability, and intense. He is sixteen, and precisely seven hours and thirty-eight minutes ago, because he happened to misplace his coat which delayed his departure which had him finding his father on his way home which means he left near half an hour later than he meant to -- because Carina decided to use the back door to her estate so she might smell the roses as they bloom to commemorate spring, because her maid braided a blue ribbon into her hair his morning instead of yellow -- because Henry's colleague met him in front of the store instead of inside it and Carina decided to visit the orphanage that morning before she continued her way to the clinic, fate transposed its peculiar ironies, and Henry passed by Carina the exact moment she was exiting the hat shop.

They were so near that he almost bumped into her, and he apologized, "Beg pardon, miss," quickly before striding on. They had breathed the same air.

Henry is sixteen, and "What was that?" Jack asks him, really just intending the poor boy become even more embarrassed. "I couldn't hear you. Your heart's beating too loudly."

"Oh, go on," he huffs with good-nature. "Don't mock me so."

"Ask just once more, Henry. I'll want to remember this."

"Just tell me what I need to know," urges Henry, going miraculously from pink to pale, "about _women_ ," he whispers.

"Any woman in particular?"

"Not really, no."

"Oh," says Jack, using that tone of doubt that betrays what he already knows. "No bonny lass? No sweet something to dream about?"

"Well. I suppose there's one young lady."

"Ah!" Truly quite pleased, Jack lays back on the mess of blankets in their pillow fort. "Spare no detail, Henry. I'm prepared to hear all of it. I'll enjoy this ride to hell."

"But there's nothing to tell!" Henry flusters, half-aghast while Jack rolls his eyes and sucks his teeth.

"Then who's your girl?"

"A Miss Matthews," Henry slowly 'fesses, blushing harder by just speaking her name. "My grandfather has hopes we'll marry."

"Marriage is dull," Jack complains, frowning quite wisely.

"That's what Grandfather says."

"What else does the old bag say?"

"That I must discern between the woman I choose to love and the woman I will have to marry."

"Sounds quite sensible," Jack nods. And suddenly, the hurt from ten years prior bleeds fresh. His ribs broke for Angelica; his knees cracked. "That's good advice. Remember it."

Henry just shakes his head. Instead of rebellious and angry, he's smiling and looking a tad smitten, enamored by the possibility of _what if_ , "No," he sighs, truly quite romantically. "I found that advice unhelpful. I'm going to find a woman who compels both love and a proposal, yes?"

"What was that?"

"Aye?"

"Aye," Jack agrees. Then as if he's wrestling with his conscience, with the likelihood of Will fighting him to the death and kissing Elizabeth victoriously, he laments with no shortage of inner turmoil, "Henry?"

"Jack?"

"You ever seen a woman bare?"

"Bare?" Henry repeats.

Jack makes a face. He won't admit so, but that curious question is all the affirmation he needed. "Sans her knickers. Nude. Unclothed," he finishes, and Henry is struggling to breathe.

"Of course not!"

"When you do, then you will know everything I know about women. That's the secret."

"That tells me nothing."

"It's all you need to know. It's all I needed to know," he says, shrugging real idle. "You'll have seen everything I know about women, as well, aye?"

"No," Henry objects, oh-so vehemently, "no, not _aye_. That still tells me nothing. Will I have to guess?"

He scrunches up his nose. "What's your papa say about women, then?"

"He says I will know when I've met the one I belong with."

"Your Miss Matthews?"

"She isn't my anything, Captain," he exhales. "She comes from money which is why Grandfather hopes I will love her."

"What's love matter? Money _can_ buy love, Henry. If you aren't interested in cannibalism, then marry the rich."

"It will save me from poverty," he agrees, bending his arm beneath his head. "Grandfather's losing his fortune, you know."

Poor boy. "I didn't."

"Yes."

"Then you'll marry Miss Matthews."

"Or Miss Cheever or Miss Vallian or Miss Carter."

"All at once?" Jack slyly teases. "Won't that make a statement. Do any of these women wish to be married to you?"

"All of them," Henry winces, somehow managing to sound humble. "I'm polite, respected, hard-working, educated, well-dressed, handsome, and kind. And I'm a divine dancer."

"You are not," denies Jack, for truthfully, he didn't know.

"I am!"

"Then go on," Jack encourages, more serious than he isn't. "Dance for me."

"I need a partner."

"God, don't we all?"

"Mister Sparrow," Henry says like he's pleading, asking with sincerest regard as he stands and bows before Jack, "might I have the honor of leading you in this dance?"

"Mister Turner," Jack murmurs, every syllable practically simpering as he stands. "Why, I'd be delighted."

"Just the hands. Imagine we're in a circle. Music drifts over from the piano, the chocolate cake is heavenly, the King is just over there. We step apart and then together."

"You're so light on your feet."

"Glance to your right and nod to the couple who've entered the circle; bow. Left, now."

"All these directions," Jack complains in a mutter.

To his credit, though, he's easily pliable or Henry's just that skilled a lead. They are dancing and flying and spinning and twirling when Elizabeth stumbles upon them, whirling about for gravity in less a dance, more hapless, aimless movement that's laughing and liberated: free.

"What on earth?" she wonders.

"Maintain eye contact," Henry tells Jack, gesturing to his face. "Step, step, wave your left arm. No, not so big, you need to -- glide. Glide," he winces, "Mum! Come show how to glide."

.

"Your father," Carina begins, after then.

"My father?"

"Is one of the most handsome men I've ever seen."

"Oh," he says exceedingly slow, staring straight out to the sea. "Oh. Likewise."

"Do you disagree?"

"Well, no," he says. The law of attraction -- he isn't thinking this is awkward or he's unbecoming. He's thinking instead that she's beautiful. And if she'll let herself fall, he will, too. "I agree."

"We have so much in common, Henry," she teases. And oh, the pink ribbon in her hair.

"Much more in common than you have with your soldier, I think. What's his name, your Mister Tall, Dark, and Handsome?"

"You know his name," she chides him, her tone just as petulant as his. "You know how I feel. Unfounded jealousy isn't becoming."

"Frankly, neither is his face."

"Mister Turner!" God, strike her down for laughing. She's all creaking, aching ribs from the first time she's laughed in _days_ , and emboldened, heartbroken, he goes on, nudging her arm with his.

"Can you believe he challenged me to a duel? Was he serious? Do you suppose he aims with one eye closed?"

"Would you kill him?" she exaggerates mercilessly, mock-concern he rather hopes is genuine for his benefit.

"I would conduct myself as a gentleman," he says, looking at her as if he's aghast. "To suppose otherwise is a mark against my honor. Will I have to challenge you, too?"

It's a bite, one that has her gaze lingering a smidgen too long on his lips. It's the subtext of her entire existence up until this point, too; is he flirting beneath these layers, or is he merely a friend? "Well," she states rather primly. "Daddy will be my second."

"Oh, dear."

"Your arms," Weatherby Swann coughs, because Henry and Carina aren't stargazing at the pier tonight. The ocean is seen through smudged glass, and their deck is his parents' parlor's floor. Instead of salt, the air smells like sugar and roses -- pink roses, because Henry remembers just as well as she does that he fell in love that night. He did.

He only lacks the courage to stand and take her in his arms and _say it_ , that when you love someone, you scream it. You prove it always finds a way to conquer death and ignite the stars. It blooms heaven from their very galaxy and incites no greater reward than the miracle of a like mind and a pair of warm hands to hold onto: love, even until they lay dying, so far lost that no one can deny how far they've wondered into the feeling of eternity's splendor. Love. It will kill her. He's actually killing her so slowly that each second _aches_.

"Father," Elizabeth sighs. With a cross huff, she throws her mending into the basket at her feet. "They're far enough away to press the good Lord comfortably between them. Desist."

"We can't have that," Weatherby sniffs, puffing up his sleeves. "Jesus is also a man, let's not forget. He can't sit that close to her either."

"Jesus is a rather handsome man, as well," Carina kindly reminds them all, so matter-of-fact.

"Dear goodness, child."

Henry arches a brow, crosses one leg over the other. "How do you figure that?"

"He was a carpenter," she explains, grinning a little too cheeky. "He must have cut quite the figure in his tunic."

"Muscled in the most perfect places," Elizabeth casually agrees. "He worked hard, after all. Day and night."

"Mother!" Henry sputters, nearly choking. "How sacrilegious. The both of you!"

"Jesus is the one infringing upon my honor," Carina teases, "sitting as close as He dares."

"I've never heard such fanciful nonsense. See, Elizabeth? Reading does give women an overactive imagination."

"Grandfather," Henry warns lightly.

"But it's from _The Bible_ and not fashion editorials or French novels, sir."

"I'd have washed His feet," Elizabeth mutters under her breath, resuming her stitch work on Will's socks.

"Elizabeth!"

"Mum!" God, help Henry, he actually collapses backwards in laughter. He's fracturing at the seams. He's all sculpted jaw and forearms, looking up at Carina from his back like he has no idea, truly no idea how he looks, "Might I apologize for them?"

"Certainly not," she grins, as bright as she dares. Extending her hand to help him right himself, he takes it, and merely a breath apart, so dreadfully close for only a second, "I love them," she adds, hushed under the sounds of his mother and grandfather bickering.

"Pardon?" Weatherby asks, whippet-quick, on them like a snake in the field. "You must speak at a volume we all can hear."

"Grandfather."

"Hush," he says. "Shall I choose from the list of pre-approved topics of conversation, or will you? Propriety has been breached enough."

"The weather," Elizabeth encourages, laughing like the traitor she is. "Have them discuss the weather again. It was riveting. Truly intelligent and thought-provoking discussion. My mind is expanded by it."

"Miss Barbossa, it's especially warm this evening," Henry says for the eighth time tonight.

Obligated, conspiringly, she acts most thoughtful when she muses, "Is it? Is that why you're blushing?"

"Am not," he says, protesting far too much for how his voice cracks beneath his blinding smile. "You're lovely."

"Mister Turner --"

"Now you're blushing," Henry tells her, practically scalding his poor, Puritanical soul. "That was too forward, I apologize."

"Goodness," she breathes, inhaling a laugh that's utter honey, pure flora and fauna and fortune -- everything good and grand. "You're so red, dear."

"Wouldn't you be? I hardly knew I was entering a courtship with my grandfather when I asked to share your company."

"Henry, don't sulk."

Elizabeth rolls her eyes. "Don't criticize my child, thank you."

"It is especially warm, isn't it?"

"Quite," Henry answers Carina. "Though the room did just grow colder."

"Perhaps we ought to step out for some fresh air," she tries, looking like the count from three to two to _run_ ; just take her hand. Promise to hold her forever in your heart where you'll carry her always, "Henry, it's so stuffy in here."

"There's plenty of air inside. And that window is open," Weatherby sternly rebukes. "I wasn't alone in a room with a woman until my wedding day, you know, Henry. I wouldn't complain. Just pretend your mother and I aren't here."

Well, Henry isn't believing that at all, but fine. Savvy. He slights his eyes to his granddad. "What's the next topic on the list?"

"Property taxes."

"Goodness!" Henry actually collapses onto the floor. "You're joking."

"No, that's something," interrupts Carina, reaching out to lightly rest her hand atop his arm. "Truly, quite stimulating discourse. When we purchase our own homestead, we'll have to know all about it. Do you know the going rate for an acre of tillable land? I expect a rose garden."

"It depends," he says. And to broaden the jest, to imagine it, he closes his eyes. "Do you want to be able to see the ocean from our windows when you wake each morning?"

" _Yes_."

"That is quite enough," snaps Weatherby, all affronted by the boldness of youth. "That is not at all the conversation I intended, and you both well know it. You know, Henry, you've your inheritance to consider, as well. It demands a suitable bride, such as Miss Lucas or Miss Hilm. You'll inherit my property."

"As opposed to an unsuitable bride," Elizabeth drolls, stabbing the sock she darns a tad too forcefully. "Do you have to insult her directly? Or are you slighting me?"

"They've made no agreement," he defends. "And from what I understand, they're 'only close acquaintances, Grandfather. Upon my honor.' Who has misled whom, dear one?"

"Of course. After all, William was the closest acquaintance I've ever had. Upon his honor, Father."

"Pirate."

"Will?" she asks, incredulous. "I've explained the situation repeatedly."

"Her," he answers. Then, to be polite, with his thinned mouth, "Miss Barbossa."

"Am not!"

"Don't shout, child."

"And what? Sit quietly while you disparage my father? He's a good man, a decent man, and I tell you," she addresses Weatherby, "he's kind enough to not begrudge Henry your old-fashioned ideas."

"Carina," Henry barely whispers, as featherlight as his touch to her sleeve.

"If you truly wish to discuss property taxes, then let's pull up the ledgers and find if you've truly paid the Crown the legal amount he's due whilst you were serving as governor. According to my father --"

"Carina," Henry interrupts, emphatic. Idle, her only point of fixation, now, his thumb caresses the spine of her palm. "I admire how much you love and respect your father, Miss Barbossa," he says. He's such the mediator that he's every bit Will's son, but one hostile look to his grandfather, and his eyes are Elizabeth's when she was refused her marriage and spurned society's and her father's support. "Isn't such admiration the testament of a good heart and a great man? Don't those feelings of adoration compel and inspire love? Such are the characteristics of a great man and a dear father."

"A great fool," calls Barbossa from the doorway. Next to Will, he's the glory and burden of twenty years prior. He's ready for this day to be finished, heavens. "God's sake, Weatherby. Richer than Midas himself, yet you couldn't find my daughter a chair to sit in?"

"They insisted upon sitting before the window so they could pretend they were outside. Don't try me, Hector."

"God's sake, Weatherby," Hector repeats since the man can't even maintain eye contact. Only now, now that he can see his girl as she stands to take her leave, straightens her skirts, and minds her hair, he can see the heartbreaking red of her eyes. "Did you make my daughter cry? Carina, treasure."

"Certainly not," Weatherby says.

"It's all right, Papa," Carina tries to assure him as she stands and quickly wraps her shawl around herself. "Can we leave?"

"What happened?" asks Will, looking from her to Elizabeth. "Were you a poor chaperone, dear?"

"Hardly."

"What did you do?" Hector demands of Weatherby. "I knew this would end badly. What have you said to her?"

"It isn't wrong of me to be involved in my grandson's affairs. Mind yourself, Hector."

"When your meddlin' brings my daughter to tears, I have a right to know how you've offended her."

"Just so we're together," Will interjects quietly, "it isn't something Henry's done?"

"No!" Henry practically shouts, standing now, too. " _No_. I'd never."

"No," Carina confirms. Softly, pulling at the lace of her sleeve, she murmurs, "He's perfect," in a regretful sort of tone, and Will and Elizabeth share a kind, private look. They've raised a good man.

"Henry, be kind enough to escort her out to Hector's carriage. Linger a while, yes?"

"Sure. We'll be just outside," he alerts everyone. "Try not to shout and stir the neighbors." How close to this vicinity they'll remain, though, since he takes Carina's hand, is at his discretion.

They've barely closed the door when Elizabeth loudly laughs a bitter sort of snarl and says, "How dare you imply she's less than Henry deserves. How dare you, Weatherby."

"You did _what_?" Barbossa hisses, going purple and breathless with rage. "I'll beat you with my peg leg, I swear, old man."

"It's kindness alone that allows you your involvement in my son's life, and you know damn well the kindness isn't mine."

"Elizabeth," Will quietly urges, begging her come back. "Don't speak what you might regret."

 

Twenty-eight minutes later, and Hector's so perplexed, he's staring strangely at the carpet with this awed, terrible sort of fixation. "Swann is a fine name. We'd sully it, wouldn't we?"

Will shakes his head, looking from one drunkening man to the other. "No, neither of those claims is true."

"But it is."

"No," says Will. Glowing a bit with pride, he adds, "Henry's name is Turner," like that satisfies it.

"Oh?" Knitting a scarf now, pretty and pink for Carina, she preens. "And Swann. You're the wealthiest family at Port, Barbossa. Even without connections, your daughter is eligible and desirable."

"Especially since she won't live long," Will agrees, very quiet. "For that reason, it's best to let her be happy. We've no interest in her money, and I know my son. All he wants is her love and the rest of her life."

"He'll be ruined if he marries her," says Swann. "He won't want to remarry. He won't have his wife's fortune to save this family."

"Will and I are his family," Elizabeth says. "We've managed just fine without porcelain and ivory."

"I'm not sure your son is good enough for her," Hector says irritably, singing like a canary and mostly trying to rile up Weatherby.

"Now wait just a moment," says Will. "My son is a delight."

 

In seven more minutes, Will and Barbossa sit quietly next to each other on the settee. They're listening to the shouting match ongoing in wits near the dining room.

"You were only cross I wasn't an impeccable doll you could manage as easily as shutting me away inside the house. You think Henry is your chance to restore yourself to exaltation? He isn't the son you wished you could have had, he's mine!"

"And mine," whispers Will, staring down at the buckles of his shoes.

"I reckon he's both of ours, now," admits Hector, painfully.

"Are you proud he's learned from your reckless, irrational ways, Elizabeth? The way he gallivants off into the night with that girl -- why, the matters they discuss! She's fastened her hold deep into him. Can't you see, they're after the family fortune?"

"Father! Knowing Barbossa, he's gotten her a solid gold hope chest. She doesn't need his money!"

"That's -- do you suppose she has plates of porcelain inside it? Ivory, diamonds?"

"I'm not telling tha' wretch," Barbossa hisses.

"I wouldn't, either. Listen, any second and he'll accuse my child of being a bastard conceived before we married."

 

In nine minutes, "Why don't you admit it? You think Maggie was a whore, and now you expect the same of my daughter! I could throttle you for your suppositions, Elizabeth!"

"I can't believe they've gone. Headstrong, foolish boy!"

"Can you blame him?"

"If you don't _shut it_." Elizabeth grits her teeth, kicks out her leg to trip her father so he quits his confounded pacing. "I'm not suggesting anything untoward about Carina's character, Hector. Calm yourself. They've likely just gone away from our yelling."

"At least he isn't a woman who can carry an illegitimate child," Weatherby mumbles. "Praise be for that."

"Nonsense, they're only friends," says Will, ignoring the slight he's heard for eighteen years just as he pretends he hadn't seen a line from one of his son's letters about the word _kissing_ , oh, Lord. "It's perfectly chaste. He's a gentleman, besides."

"And she's a lady," Hector adds. "I trust their conduct."

"Only friends," Elizabeth repeats as she smiles in a quiet, distracted way. "Remember when we were only friends?"

"Up until the wedding afternoon," Will says, tenderly stroking her ankle, her feet that are in his lap. "You know, you were the closest acquaintance I've ever had."

"If it were us in this circumstance, I'd have run away with you to elope."

"How do you know they haven't?" Sitting up, Barbossa's startled sober now after cup after cup of tea. "Dear God, she would."

"I've made him swear that he will have Elizabeth and me as his witnesses should he choose to elope," Will calmly answers, lounging back. "I trust him."

"See, Father, that's what a healthy parent-child relationship consists of."

"You've talked with him about his wedding her, yet you state he's only her friend."

"Every man for himself," Elizabeth shrugs, sinking further into her sofa with Will. "I doubt they would do anything we would disprove of."

"We differ on that regard, dear one."

"What is it that you imply? My daughter won't corrupt your grandson. He's the worldly sailor! He'll impose upon her!"

"Heaven's sake, he's a bookkeeper, Barbossa, not a pillaging pirate."

 

"Look what I've found!" she gushes in the next few minutes. "The painting of Henry at six months old. Wasn't he beautiful? You could tell even then, Will, he had your chin."

 

Another six minutes, and Hector actually pulls his pistol out and threatens to dead Weatherby where he stands, gaping like a fish as he is.

 

In two more, he's just remembered why this will end badly, and no matter how Will and Elizabeth convince him that worthiness isn't a contingency, he's pessimistic. He's so sad that it feels he's lost her already.

 

Within six more, "I don't regret my faith in you yet," Will warns in authority like the stalwart, commanding captain of a ship he was, the berth that is now his home, his house to head. "But I might soon, Mister Swann. Why do you insist on his marrying someone of means? Let him be happy."

"He can't be trusted to choose what he wants. He's impressionable and passionate. He doesn't listen. He's so like Elizabeth that it's giving me apoplexy."

"Your daughter makes him happy, Barbossa," swears Will, turning to face him. Unwavering and contrite, he's vowing it; he's breathing, and letting love be. "I believe he even loves her. Understand that Elizabeth and I love her, too. If they're considering marriage, we support it."

"She isn't considering marriage," Barbossa quietly mutters. Just, he isn't sure. He doesn't know why she would in her condition. "I think it best if we keep them apart. For their own protection."

"But Hector, she has no other friends. No suitors. You can't keep her inside all the time."

"I'll do as I like."

"Can't you let her live?"

On the other side of town, however, the lighthouse is a beacon in the distance, and where they lay in the tall grass -- quiet, lost in each other with her hand fisted into his shirt, both his arms holding her -- the sky lives above her, breathes new life each instant, so she decides that she will, too. She must live.

"There's the constellation Lyra," he whispers, quietly etching the words into her hair, tracing the patterns of the stars against the small of her back. "That story's a romance, you know."

"My favorite sort," she whispers back, splaying her fingers across his chest slowly. "Does it end sadly?"

"I don't remember, sweetheart," he soothes as he cups her soft cheek in his hand, traces her jaw with the rough calluses of his thumb. "We'll make it a happy one, all right? One where love conquers death and nothing matters beyond surviving until the lovers share their next glance."

"Do you think it's truly like that?"

"Hmm?" Deep in his throat, his hum echoes. It reverberates through her skin, warms her, his thick, rugged voice. "Is what, love?"

It flushes her skin, too, burns her so brightly that she's thinking OH, NO. Please, no. She doesn't need the heat that his fingers feel across her cheek, follow to her throat, her collarbones. When she says it, he can feel the swell of the breath he's stolen from her, the mountain that's blooming in her rib cage beneath his strong hand. "Love."

"Is love able to conquer death, you mean?" he asks her, oh-so nonchalant. "Can it quiet time and dim thunder and preserve the petals of flowers in frozen winters?"

"Something like that," she whispers, pressing her cheek against the starch linen of his shirt. "That's a lovely thought."

"I believe it can, Carina." He says it so certainly, as if because he's verbalized the miracle, it's true.

And she wants to believe it. She does.

Instead, she murmurs that she's sorry, grips onto his collar again. "Do you know what kills me, Henry?" she asks him, lifting her head from his chest to face him like a flash of fire across the sea, a strike of lightning in the distance. That look on her face, he feels it, so profoundly that he can hardly breathe.

"I could guess." Her visage is all he can see, and looking up at her like this, feeling her palm against his heart, "Me," he slowly says, drawing out the word like he draws her in: timidly, carefully, full of restraint. "I think it's me," he repeats, and just before they kiss --

\-- they don't.

.

"Good afternoon, Miss Barbossa."

"Please," she laughs, for he's her tutor, but he's brought her a pink rose. "How many more times must I tell you? You're teaching me anatomy, for goodness' sake. Call me Carina."

Hector quite audibly inhales from the drawing room an open door away.

"I'm afraid you'll have to tell me at least once more, Miss Barbossa," flushes Henry, smiling a timid too brightly to appear overtly polite. "What shall we discuss today?"

"Mortality," she chooses, frowning at him in such a way that his brow furrows.

"Whose in particular, miss?"

"Samson's, though I'm interested in the accounts that his person inspired or proved to be Greece's mythical Hercules. Have you any thoughts?"

"How thought-provoking," he says, quite actually looking a little dazed. "Why, the implications of the unholy powers present in both narratives alone, how odd. Of course, both gentlemen proved their greatest weakness was love. Isn't that a sad theme?" Giving up all pretense of academics, true to fashion, he pushes the same volumes he brings every week to the edge of the table, unbuttons his coat before he sits. "Does love make a human mortal?"

"Arguably, love made God a mortal, didn't it?"

"With Achilles," agrees Henry, improperly placing his elbow on the tabletop to cup his chin in his hand. "Are we deducing that love is a fault?"

"I haven't decided," she muses, grinning in a manner that's soft as the rose's petals as she pets them. "I don't think it's a virtue."

"How curious."

"Isn't it? I've only just concluded."

"All of these cautionary tales," says Henry, almost, _almost_ reaching out his hand to her. Perhaps, if he were braver. "Yet here we are. Love can be condemning."

"Confining."

"Conducive to liberty," he contradicts sweetly, so ahead of his time, 'cause God, he's debating the principles of mortality, and she looks like she wants to kiss the tutor.

"Tell me something, Mister Turner."

"About what?"

"Anything," she says, her eyes so impossibly bright.

"Well," he begins, slowly trying to gather his thoughts, to conceive something worthy of her time and universal splendor: love -- a story about love, and by extension, human mortality, "so," he says as he draws his chair nearer hers, "I was told this tale by Jack Sparrow."

"Uncle," she grins, just as Hector invariably shouts _captain_ from the next room.

"If you ask him, he's my father, but anyways, yes, the one and only. I used to ask for this story repeatedly when I was a boy. It's one I'm told your father knows."

"Is that so? I hear so little about anything exciting he's done."

"If not for him, these two wouldn't have met," he tells her, the most perfect and subtle foil. "The scene is a tropical jungle, imagine it."

"I'm trying," she murmurs, mostly just seeing him all brightened by excitement. Truly, his soul shines; the fever allows her to see light more clearly. It catches upon everything good and enhances the beauty.

"He wouldn't tell me the exact location should I mean to sail for it, but if I'm correct --"

"You are," she interrupts, standing when he does and moving towards the globe at the corner of the room.

"It should be here," he points.

"What should?" Standing this closely, nearly brushing arms, is truly too much. She's going to faint, heaven above, this boy's _freckles_.

"Carina," he whispers, so scant. Longingly, his gaze drops to her red lips for only a brief moment, a year to her life's reduced sentence. "The Fountain of Youth."

"Henry!" Breathless, she latches onto his arm to keep from falling down. "It's real? It honestly exists?"

Sensing the weakness of her knees, he takes hold of her waist and gently presses her back against the foundation of the wall behind her. "Are you all right?" he hushes, gingerly looking her over for symptoms of fright.

"My father knows such a fountain exists?"

"I believe so," he frowns, brown-eyed concern.

"Henry," she murmurs, so happy now that she's nearly crying with the emotion that's unbalanced her, " _Henry_ , let's go there."

"Carina --"

"Please," she begs, gripping onto his shirt's collar firmly. "We must."

Oddly, though, he laughs in a quiet, confused way. "I didn't know you were so vain. Or that.. ambitious, rather. Carina, the Fountain was ruined."

"What? No."

"I'm afraid it was."

"But that's unjust!"

"Jack tells me the Fountain was unjust. In order to be cleansed, Carina, the Fountain required the price of flesh. To live forever, one would have needed to sacrifice the life of someone they cared for."

"Oh," she murmurs, half-sounding far away. Woe, these mortal games. For scarcely twenty seconds, she was eternal; however, there is consolation in what might have been. "So love is condemning as the price of mortality."

"Not quite," he says, still looking into her eyes and so, of course, forgetting to release her. "Jack tells me there are other ways to live forever."

"Such as?" she wonders, almost out of breath again.

"In the memories of those left behind."

"Goodness, Henry."

"I mean it. Jack tells me that I must remember it."

"Henry."

"All right," he concedes, locking his strong, stubborn jaw. "It pertains to the story I was trying to tell you. Did you know that a kiss from a mermaid can save a sailor from drowning?"

God, she actually lets go of _him_ and rolls her eyes. "Mermaids aren't real."

"Captain Jack Sparrow believes they are."

"Jack Sparrow," she says, eyes going red, now, for the fraction of a chance she might have had was just torn away, "has lied to me on many occasions. I don't presume to trust his character."

"He's seen them. I believe your father has, as well."

"Well, then," she says, pulling out of his hold to return to the table. "Is one saved only from drowning?"

"Not if the story is to be believed. His name was Philip, and he was a missionary."

"Was? You imply he no longer lives."

"There's still the slightest possibility that she pulled him into the water and drowned him, miss, but I don't believe that," he says. Nonchalantly, he waves his arm. "Anyways, I believe he's now a minister in a small seaside town like ours. His wife is said to walk barefoot upon the tides and sing to the current."

"You've found them?" she asks in disbelief.

"I don't know if they're the ones Jack spoke of, but I like to think so."

"Goodness, but you are a romantic soul, aren't you?" she says, not at all reproachful.

"Sometimes, love deserves to win, Carina. Miss Barbossa, pardon. This missionary, Philip Swyft, was a devout purveyor of the Scriptures. He preached God's mercy and His penance and tried to remain devoted to His service. When he saw this mermaid, though, he couldn't believe his eyes the sheer beauty of the creature."

"What did she look like?"

"Breathtaking," he says. Then quite charmingly, so, so smitten that he flushes, "Dark hair and eyes that I believe were clear and blue. The most beautiful he had ever seen." It's only partially a lie. "He eventually had to decide between a life by holy misinterpretation or his heart's own ideas about the meanings of mercy and hope and salvation. He chose hope, I'm sure you can guess," he smiles, broad through the subtext.

"I'm sure," she smiles back, unwittingly soft. "How did she come to save him?"

"Oh, he was stabbed by the Pirate Blackbeard, I believe."

"Pardon?" Burn her for laughing. "How inconvenient."

"Yes, romances often are, but prior, mind you, he named the mermaid. To name something is to love it, you know. Syrena was his destiny. It's said that he --"

"Yes?"

"Nothing," he murmurs, for he had just -- oh, bugger. "I had forgotten until this moment one of the details of the story. I'm afraid it's rather indelicate, so I'll just continue. Syrena was his destiny." His naked destiny against his bare chest.

"I want to hear," she complains, folding her hands in a way that stomping her little foot might have better emphasized in dramatics. "You have to tell me."

"It's indecent," he hushes, so adorably pink. "I shouldn't have told you so. Don't compromise the carefully structured propriety we have here, miss."

"Mister Turner, it's the wall of Jericho."

"And I haven't got a trumpet. So," he says, "overcome by the truest form of love, Syrena wept for Philip's kindness. They were both exploited, though, and with her tear stolen by pirates, she was left to die between the land and the sea."

"I feel as if I were there," she lies, hopelessly confused.

"He came to rescue her; never fear. He freed her from the bonds that would have killed her even as he lay dying."

"Oh, my goodness."

"Yes. He told her that he didn't desire to be saved from his fleshy wounds, Carina. He only wished that she could forgive him for his faults and for the rest of man's. He sought to only be seen by her with a fraction of the regard he esteemed of her, for being worthy of such a woman's love is eternity in itself with the most spiritual retribution of salvation."

"Oh," she says, quite struck by his conviction. The intensity of his voice and his stare nearly has her sobbing in joy, oh, goodness, the proof that sometimes, one who loves doesn't have to lose.

"Carina, the mermaid told him that if he desires her forgiveness, he should only ask for it and be granted its mercy. He bade her forgive him, and."

"And what?" she wonders, sniffling quietly despite herself. "You spoke so quietly that I didn't hear."

"I said," he repeats, inhaling a deep, sure breath, "she took his face in her hands and kissed him just as the water parted beneath their bodies. They descended, entwined, and remained happily together, unable to imagine any other life."

"Tell me once more," she implores him, feigning emotionless composure as his neck starts to burn red.

"She kissed him."

"Oh," she says so, so lightly, for how he looks at her is suddenly soft and open and imploring.

I imagine he saw heaven."

"Unless she did drown him," she adds, now blushing a fair shade of pink that spreads and warms. "You're very poetic, Mister Turner."

"I'm compelled by emotion," he says, intrinsic.

"Is he a merman, then? Philip Swyft? Does Jack know this?"

"I don't think she drowned him. Someone had to tell Jack this story, and a dead man couldn't have. I believe he adapted somehow, as magic goes, to survive according to the legend's properties."

"I should find him," she muses. "If a mermaid's kiss can save him, then.. well," she smiles, a distracted, bright lilt. "C'est la vie. Thank you for that, Mister Turner. Truly, I loved it. Each word."

"Yes?"

"Yes," she beams. "Do you suppose he would kiss me, if we met?"

"Well," says Henry, entirely unaware Barbossa's chosen this moment to see how his daughter's studies are progressing, "I would."

.

"As a formality and a courtesy, Mister Barbossa, I'm here to ask permission to pursue a relationship with your daughter."

"Do you not speak to her? Do you not see her, Henry?"

"Of course, sir, yes," Henry answers, and just outside the archway, the hand-chiseled, ornate stone, the wall seems to sigh with longing. Carina presses her hand upon the embroidered finishings, leaning against the wall to hear. "Perhaps I should have clarified, Mister Barbossa."

"Then please do."

"I had hoped you'd offer your blessing that I might --"

"Had hoped," Hector pointedly interrupts, so rude and biting. "If you're no longer so optimistic as to HOPE for my acquiescence, then save yourself your dignity and leave my property."

"Sir, you misunderstand."

"Did you misspeak?"

"I thought I made my interest quite clear."

"I have been straightforward in me statements, Henry. I instructed you well about the nature of the relationship you might pursue with my daughter."

"Matters of the heart are unpredictable," Henry counters, thinking only of her. Trying to be brave. "I assure you, I've only met with Miss Carina in an appropriately professional manner. It is my wish that I pay court to her, however. I am led to believe she shares the same wish."

"You must know that would be impossible," Barbossa says. It doesn't give him joy, no matter what Carina must think. He puts his hands over his eyes, and the fight leaves him as surely as she's losing it, and he says once more, so defeatedly, "Henry, you must know that's impossible. She _can’t_."

"Respectfully, if she chooses so, sir, then why mustn't she?"

His mother's eyes nearly bring forth the truth, quell the storm brewing inside Barbossa's chest, but before he can tell the truth that she is dying and is almost already dead, "Henry," Carina calls from the door. In yellow, she is so cheery, and in vain, is she subtle.

"Miss Barbossa." Henry stands to see her at once.

"Carina, if you please."

"Miss Barbossa," he purposefully inflects, ignoring her small frown, "I'm pleased you have joined us."

“Weren’t we going to visit your mother, Henry?” she asks. And then, without him or not, she outright continues to the front entry and actually exits.

“Yes,” says Henry, rather confusedly. “By your leave, Mister Barbossa, sir. I’ll –- catch her.”

.

The first time Henry sees her cough until she spills blood and collapses into a chair, he doesn't fully understand.

See, winter rushes in and cools the island, only not enough to ease her fever and chill her blood. She bathes in frigid water and floats in the sea, sometimes, and Hector has long since allowed fires to be lit in his home. It's been so chilly with the graying weather that he and his servants perpetually wear their coats and layers daily, but his dear, his treasure, she stops dressing entirely and floats through the house in her white nightgowns as if she's a ghost haunting him already.

He's had her belongings moved from her bedroom above the garden to another room across the hall with thrice as many windows that remain open night and day. The air refreshes her, she claims, and the cold keeps her living, she hopes, so she stands before the balcony in her white night dress while a storm blows in from the Caribbean tides.

She stands in the whipping wind before the occasional splash of rain water cooling her heated skin, and she feels more alive than she's previously ever experienced; she feels eternal, in those seconds, until sleep beckons her like a cold compress and soothes her to a deadened sleep.

Once, though she doesn't remember, she woke from a sleep so deep and a fear so vital that she bade her father send for Uncle Jack. "Soon," she made him swear, "I'll be away soon," she told him, but fell back to sleep within seconds.

He watches her rest and waits any change in her condition while she sleeps now and has ever since. He doesn't want to be away when she passes, for he was present for her birth and will be with her at her end.

This is a reminder that this story isn't Henry's, though; when he sees her cough blood and faint for the first time, his heart breaks, yes.

( _Please, he’s my husband_.)

But Carina's, her heart stops.


	11. eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take heart!

"Once there was a girl," decides Henry, actually going to freeze to death here. 

Or -- or not, because there is her body atop his body, and there are the stars overhead. There is her gown left a few paces away in a heap; there is his shirt discarded next to it. There are his hands in her hair and his trousers unlaced and her shift thin and white and damp from their sweat, their splendor, their sex. 

"Was there a boy?"

"I'm telling the story," he whispers as he lightly caresses her shoulder blades. "There was a girl on a ship that was sailing from England. She wore a blue dress and sang to the ocean, dear, like you."

"Like Syrena," she murmurs, soft against his chest, because in moments of peace like this where hope is enchanting, that story is one she has him tell her over and over again until it's true. 

"Yes, but instead of a mermaid singing back to her, the ocean gave her a different sort of gift."

"A pearl."

"A prince," he says.

"A pirate," she contradicts in this fond, loving way, OH, the utter sweetness with which she once held his hand and kissed his wrist where all the men in their lives were scarred with a brand. "Like you."

"A boy half-drowned and shipwrecked, floating on debris near her father's ship," he admits as if it's some unforeseen twist in the narrative, a surprise that has her gasping, has him feeling every stretch and curve of her body. "If she hadn't spotted him, love, where would we be?"

"Likely married properly after a three month courtship your father wouldn't approve of, Mister Norrington," she teases, open-mouthed and wet upon his collarbone, a kiss she bites into his skin. "But she _did_ find him."

"In an ocean that stretches thousands of miles, she found him," he says, and oh, when he grips her hips, presses into her just so. "They grew up together, did you know?"

"The story does sound familiar," she murmurs. She tenderly reaches for his face, and he kisses the softness of her palm, rasps his stubble against the life line, the marriage line, the creases that have made her fate a branch upon the tree of time, an extension of his purpose here, with her.

"It's almost our story. Did I tell you how much it meant to me, Carina?"

"How much what meant?"

"Our wedding," he softly replies, and chills press into her body when he touches her, burn an intense, deep sort of pressure that clenches and flows. 

"I'm sorry we're to have another. I know it isn't what you want."

"What I want," he says. He edges the hem of her chemise up the slightest breath, the one she draws in when his cold hands find the heat of her thighs, curves he follows underneath the silk to feel her hips, her rib bones. "I've gotten what I want. You love me as I love you."

"And that's all?" she teases, lowering herself to him so they could kiss, so.. 

Intimacy does for confidence what mercy did for Mary Magdalene; love flows like the promise of the future, a barefoot wedding with a crown of palm fronds upon a blushing bride's head, familiarity like physicality -- trust. Love like her open arms and his sighing mouth. The slowness and the sweetness, "Love," he calls her when they begin to breathe together, "Carina."

.

"If you've changed your mind," he whispered that night, holding her hand so tightly that she feared he might break it, "if you've decided that you won't have me, Carina, tell me now."

"If you weren't late to come get me, I would've had you already," she murmurs, and oh, he is profane when he kisses her quiet. 

He backs her into her home's fence post to hold her still with his body, to have her unable to move except towards him in this way that's almost, _almost_ married. Familiar and heated and breathless. His fingers on her cheek coax her lips to part, but they'll miss their chance if they're not in their boat in minutes; he'll forget himself if he lingers, so with a sweeter, more chaste kiss, they're off running like a gun shot, like crazy, freed, laughing prisoners who've barely escaped the gallows but can already taste their freedom in the windblown salt of the air. 

"You're sure?" he asks her once more, both his hands ready to push their little boat out to sea, his heels ready to kick away from the sand's surf. "It isn't too late for me to bring you home. This is mad," he whispers still, "and I would hate for you to regret me."

"Will you?" she asks him, seated and nearly bursting from the anticipation and the slightest inkling of fear. Her shawl is delicate white lace tonight, and for the first time in months, she's cold. Her pulse is singing beneath her skin. 

"I never could," he swears, sounding so certain. "I will love you. I will love you as you love me, Carina. You're the best of everything I've ever known."

"Oh," she murmurs tearfully, so fretfully that everything within him ceases purpose. He's pierced her soul, and he is everything she knows about love. "Oh, no."

"No?" With no large amount of grace, he quickly steps into the boat so he can pull her safely into his arms, gather had closely against his chest. As he gazes into her watery, red, loving eyes, he manages to say, "All right, I'll bring you home, Carina. Please don't cry, love; there's no reason to. It isn't too late to turn back. We'll go home."

"No," she tells him, forcefully taking his face in her hands, so warm against his cold skin. "No. No, Henry, I don't want to go home."

"I'll take you anywhere you wish," he placates. He's breathing with her, each breath she manages. 

"Henry," she whispers, a lilt too brokenly. In her wish to have him understand, she's reminded that she's never let him, so her crying eyes now, the hopelessness that she isn't supposed to feel succumbed to a life over instead of anew, he's concernedly watching her and hoping this is one of the burdens that she will trade him for her happiness. "I don't want us to be late, Henry."

"That's all?" he laughs, so anxiously relieved. So fucking scared that his life begins again tonight, with her. Tenderly, he kisses her forehead and thanks Poseidon. "Jack will wait, love. Don't worry about that."

"Henry, that's not all," she says. She's dying, here, as she wishes he would understand. "I want to marry you, Henry."

"Carina, if not tonight --"

" _Henry_ ," she pleads, because after this, him and her, their ending, he will need to remember the moments when she felt infinite. If not now, when? "I want to marry you. I want to give you children, Henry," she says, and when her voice breaks, so does he. "I want to grow old with you and die having lived a full, happy life by your side. I want all of it, all of us, and I want the sky, too, Henry. God, I want it to _burn_."

"Carina," he hardly manages, sounding strained. He kisses her, then, and she doesn't know whose tears wet her cheeks. "Jesus Christ. I'm so serious," he so seriously tells her not even four minutes later. "If we make it there, and you're standing opposite of me and suddenly think: 'Heavens, no,' I will manfully oblige your dissent."

"If," she quips in this mock-serious way, using _that_ tone so he will laugh and flex his muscles as he rows them, "IF we make it there, Henry? What do you think would keep us, a shark or the Navy?"

"Which would we have better chances defeating, do you think?"

"The Navy," she muses. "I'll just show the sailors my ankles so you won't be fined."

"Madam," he starts, clenching his jaw hard. "You'll make me lose an oar, and then we'll be lost at sea."

"Is that the ship?"

"I hope so," he says as he squints behind her. 

"Henry?"

"Yes?"

"If I forget to tell you after, I very much enjoyed tonight."

"Very much?" he grins, so devil-may-care that it's ridiculous, how pink he turns in fleeting seconds of false bravado. 

"I -- I meant spending time with you."

"As did I."

"As a suitor," she tries to remedy. "I didn't mean -- I've enjoyed each moment. Truly."

"As did I," he promises, gone from scorching to sweet as effortlessly as he does all things: moves, breathes, loves, and forgives, all without blinking, "Carina," he sighs, so, so tenderly. "Be careful as you climb up."

"Yes," she says. And by the faded black of the Pearl now, she climbs the rigged ladder up to Jack Sparrow's waiting, shaking arms, oh, 

"Love," he calls her, squeezing her tightly. Just not too tightly -- he's so careful as to not hurt her that she's almost an infant again, a babe in his arms and a soft spot in his heart. "Henry," he gushes, too, when he's come up, "you look beautiful." 

"Don't I?" he smarts.

"You're sure you want him?" Jack whispers loudly in Carina's ear, quickly turning them away. "I'm sure you can do better than Turner boy."

"I couldn't," she so prettily beams, gingerly patting his arm. "I'm sure. We're ready."

"You're sure he isn't a eunuch like his father?"

"Jack!"

"If you'd go on and marry us, I could find out," she quietly hushes, this teasing, japing edge, soft as her pink bridal gown.

"Oh, dear," murmurs Henry without a touch of irony.

"Oh, dear," Jack echoes. "I should have told Hector to send you to a convent, shan't I? He wanted to."

"Jack, it wasn't a convent. It was a finishing school." Rather breathlessly, she laughs, and really, there's nothing to do but take Henry's hand and hold on -- hold tight. She thinks that she feels precisely like that look on his face of wonder and adoration and love, so glancing to her Uncle Jack, the peculiar, almost saddened way he's watching them exist entirely alone, she merely nods. Weak at first, then stronger as her eyes begin to water and her knees start to tremble. "Yes, him," she says, feeling at once so beautifully luminescent. "I take this man."

"Carina, lass," Jack thickly manages, only a tad heartbroken and mended. "I didn't ask yet."

"Then go on," Henry urges. Partially because he won't be able to when they're properly wed at their church, mostly because he can't resist touching her in some way, he closes the distance between them and rests his palm gently over her back. "Dear," he whispers, as steady as his heart beats beneath her hand when she reaches for it. 

"Dearly, dearly beloved," Jack says. Nearing them and half-unsure he'll survive it, the love that is weighing upon him, the casualties that will come from loving someone else so much, he prays. "I am gathered here tonight to witness this union and most holy of marriages. By the powers invested in me as Captain --"

"Not yet," interrupts Henry, scarcely even acknowledging Jack. "That comes after."

Jack hesitates, makes a face. "After what?"

"Before you announce us as husband and wife."

"I'm announcing it," Jack declares. "You're husband and wife, now God help you. You take Henry Turner to be yours forever?"

"Of course, yes." 

"How lovely for him," goes Jack, inhaling sharply. He won't cry. "And you take Carina Smyth Barbossa to be your wife?"

"I do," he promises.

"To have and to hold?"

"Yes."

"To love and to cherish?" he presses, squinting a bit, a speck of dust.

"Yes," repeats Henry, drawing nearer to Carina with each breath he exhales. As he just barely bends his knees to better reach her, she stretches up, using her hand on his collar for an anchor, and they're so, so close. So close that when Henry skims his tongue over his bottom lip to wet it, she feels it and him, the brush of his mouth against hers in a quiet, wanting way. 

"Pardon," begs Jack, just trying to -- Christ. "'M still here," he reminds them. Rather like petting a squid, he prods at Henry's arm, forces him a cold wind away. "You have a ring?"

At once, Henry dawns with dread. Disappointedly, he sighs, and he brings his left hand to her waist in apology. "I've forgotten to get you one, Carina. I'm so sorry."

"I don't mind," she insists, pulling him just a smidgen closer to her. "I don't need one."

"But you do."

"You do," Jack echoes, and when Carina glances at him, he winks roguishly enough that she flushes. "Try this, lass."

"Jack, I couldn't," she whispers, going still.

"Try," he orders gently, like the gesture means nothing to him. It's the least he can do, really, for how much they have meant to him since they each were born. 

While she's too stunned by the gesture to take it, though, Henry accepts with all the severity that presenting his bride with her ring requires. The ring Jack removed from his smallest finger, a black diamond, encloses her fourth finger perfectly when Henry gifts it to her. 

She nearly cries for it, and breaks from Henry only long enough to throw her arms around her uncle, her Jack, and murmur, "Thank you, thank you," with kind kisses to his weathered cheek. "Do you know what this means to me?" she wonders, looking at him in such a way that he feels melted, impervious to light, glistening -- the lights that her fever sparks within everything she sees, they have drifted from the stars and into his heart. Tonight, he shines, and it is his soul.

"I expect so," Jack soothes, and as he witnesses this, the sweet way Carina drifts back into Henry's arms like they're each untethered and immune from gravity and the sun's command, he feels blessed.

"Are we wed yet?"

"Oh," swallows Jack. Suddenly, their look is too intimate for him to see, so he turns. "You're husband and wife now, savvy? For all the rest of your days."

"Not savvy," Henry mumbles, but he's kissing Carina before Jack tells him he may, and it is a flood that pours from the entire burning sky, the little piece of heaven that lingers and falls -- the fall. The tumultuous collapse into love like his reckless abandon and her senseless passion and his dying breaths. His heart breathes for her now, and he has never, he has never -- he has never loved like this. 

They kiss like it is the first time, their last, finding each other beyond time and space to the collision theory's aftermath, adaption's persistence, evolution's cruel trick of Adam's intensity and Pluto's regret. He kisses her, and the love that makes spirits kindred and souls mates, at the beginning, her atoms recognized his like his exhaustion and her pain bartered for his happiness and her peace, he kisses her, and the slow way he licks into her mouth, the deliberate burn that his stubble rasps against her skin, it consumes. 

He kisses her, and _God_ , he swears. He can't believe he once thought he had only dreamed her. She, she didn't know he could ever matter so much to her.

"Will you stay?" Jack asks them when they've parted. Carelessly, half-hoping, he admits what they already know. "I can't stay much longer, not with the Pearl."

"Stay?" echoes Carina. "To what?"

"Christen the deck?"

"I beg your pardon?" She chokes, and Jack chuckles quietly, another kiss of a smile to his sea.

"No," blushes Henry. "I don't think we should stay."

"You could," he offers, only quietly suggestive, now mostly wishing. "I could use you as crew. You could honeymoon around the world, sailing forever from beach to beach to port. I would."

"We can't," she insists, looking doubtful already even as Henry seems cautiously considerate.

"Well, why not?"

"We can't," she says again, because if she dies and her father can't come to her -- "no. We have to go back. We're getting married in four weeks. Our families expect it."

"I know," says Jack. He seems to ask _does he?_ just by crossing his arms, and the subtle way she leans into Henry answers him. "Of course," he continues like it’s a joke. These two have made him so soft. "A wedding with ringing bells and Irish lace and fancy cheese, aye?"

"Something like that," Henry answers. But he grins and adds, "And a bottle of rum," and Sparrow actually laughs. 

It's just rather sad. 

"Soon," he promises them, so stoically so suddenly that Carina begins to worry for him. "I'll visit you both soon, loves. I trust you'll make her very happy, Henry."

"Yes," he promises. "Thank you for marrying us, Jack. It meant the world."

"What was that?"

"Captain," Henry corrects, so goodness. 

Jack quickly strides over to take both his kids in his arms. "Be well," he pleads. "Henry, tell your mum you've married."

"I will."

"Uncle Jack, can't you stay a while?"

"To witness the consummation? Generous, lass, but no."

"You know what --"

"Yes, yes," he interrupts her huffing, leaning back to look at her face clearly and just in case as he always does before he leaves; he will want to remember this. "But I won't be hung on your wedding day, love. I need to go while the wind says to."

"Then promise again, soon," she makes him say, and he does with his hand to God, his fingers crossed behind his back.

"Turner," he whispers, though, quick as a slap before he's descended the ladder.

"Yes?" Henry whispers back, glancing down quickly to make sure his wife hasn't unbalanced their boat and drowned or something. "Do you have advice for me?"

"Of course," Jack muses, so discrete and hush-hush. "Tell her you've never been with a woman."

"But that would be the truth."

"That's what I told you. Tell the truth always. You won't have to pay her for it, neither, except you will. She'll keep all your coins as collateral justice, so be wary of women, boy. They're the devil. Blasphemous sirens."

"Jack." Wavering, Henry just sorta shrugs. "This is no help."

"I know," Jack shushes him like it's his fault, his. "Just remember she loves you, aye?"

"Yes."

"Go slowly," he suggests. "You could hurt her otherwise."

"And?" he presses on, leaning in a bit. "Anything else about what to do?"

"Hold on."

"To her?"

"Yes," says Jack, very quietly. "To her memory. You know how to send me word if you have a need. I'll be there."

"Do you suppose he's all right?" Carina asks him when he rows them back to shore. The Black Pearl has been long gone, a dull fade to empty air, but still, she searches for it behind them. 

"I think he was quite touched we asked him to marry us weeks ago, but to actually do it," he says. "I thought he might cry. I thought I would," he laughs, this free, easy sound that carries her. "Do you think one can die from feeling this happy?"

"I hope not," she answers in earnest. "Do you think our families will be quite miffed?"

"We'll tell them."

"Yes," she agrees, almost inaudible.

"Though we did choose to marry for ourselves," Henry tells her, almost like NO. Perhaps not. "They will get the wedding they're hoping for. Why not keep ours to ourselves, aye?"

"Yes," she sighs, so delicately slight across her collarbones. 

It isn't the most subtle moment of his life when, with the pretense of fixing that smudge on her chin, he presses his kiss to hers so softly that she sighs once more, tasting of the sea salt that dances around them so caressingly that she is sweet as honey, cool against his tongue. 

"Mrs. Turner," he murmurs, and oh, as he strokes her cheek, she kisses his fingers, softly dots her tongue against the tips. 

"Say that again," she whispers.

"Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner," he calls her, having never meant anything more, " _Carina_. I've no place to take you but the meadow. Will you still have me?"

"Of course, _yes_ , Henry," she laughs, for truly, she wants nothing more than the grass and the stretch of the open, wide sky, the burning, hungering stars that twinkle and shine and witness her _yes_ , she will tell him. 

Hardly breathing, shivering, and bare, she will stand before him, and he will touch her slowly, delicately, reverently -- he will ask if he might first, and she will say _yes_ until she's sighing the syllable, until he lifts her in his arms only to lay her down. 

.

"Uncle Jack," she nearly whinges, all dressed up here now with nowhere to go. "Tell him to let me leave."

"Do you want to be rude to your guest, Carina?" Barbossa asks, otherwise silent and stoic as he reads over different papers of something or another.

"He wouldn't mind waiting only a couple hours, wouldn't you, Uncle?"

"A couple hours?" Jesus, no one is more surprised than Jack is when his hands remember by muscle memory how to play the piano's keys to a little ditty he knew some forty years prior. "What takes a couple hours?"

"The blowing out ball."

"Sounds like some sort of orgy," he sniffs, turning on the bench to face her in her pretty blue dress. "I say you're much too young to indulge."

"Well, I didn't go to the lighting up ball," she complains, twisting her handkerchief in her hands. It's new, unstained. "It's to commemorate the changing of the seasons, see, for lengthier periods of daylight mean there's no reason to keep lighting lanterns so early."

"Is this a euphemism?"

"Don't listen to her, Jack," says Hector in _that_ way that makes her roll her eyes. "She doesn't care about town festivities. She cares about the Turner boy."

"Henry," Jack smiles, going all fond-eyed and proud. After all, he feels his boy's a third of his to claim. He's raised him well. It's Elizabeth that's ruined him. "Will he be in attendance at the ball?"

"Yes," answers Carina, too quickly. "At least, he should be. I'm hoping to see him, that is."

"Why?"

"Father," she huffs, pulling at her gloves now so she won't have to make eye contact. 

"Child, answer me, why? You see him near' every week."

"Not in social settings."

"Do you not communicate?" 

"Not intimately."

"Didn't I tell you that you wouldn't be allowed to court him?"

"In particular?" asks Jack curiously. Carina's eyes quickly land on him.

"What?"

"She can pay court to everyone but him?"

It takes Hector a decent four seconds, but he decides: "Yes," quite soundly, and Carina actually throws herself onto the settee and screams into the cushion.

"Why?"

"You presume to question me?"

"He's kind," defends Jack a touch awkwardly, rather unused to the idea of defending Henry's honor. "He's polite. He's clean. He's a talented dancer," he says, almost cracking that these are actually complaints. "I say she should run to him, snap him up before he's taken by some hussy in cheap lace."

"He's a sailor," snaps Barbossa, squinting through his spectacles to make out his own writing. "He's unsuitable. Worldly."

"He's a bookkeeper!" 

"You were a bloody pirate lord, you one-legged traitor. Lucky the King pardoned you, or your girl here would have been sent to an orphanage and traded for flour and wheat."

"You could have kept me," she quickly interjects, sitting up as best she can without needing to move. "Would you have, Uncle Jack?" she asks him, eyes just -- just so blue. It's the ocean, and it's the fear in his veins.

"Of course, love," he lies sincerely. 

"That's enough," snaps Barbossa. "Quit feedin' her half-truths. He would have abandoned you, treasure."

"I would have found you kind people."

"You know no kind people."

"I do," Jack contradicts, going calm yet just barely tense, anger he's so adept at hiding. "And I would let you attend this ball so Turner boy can dance you into a stupor. He's very light on his feet, you know."

Barbossa only sighs. It's an argument they've fought before, and it brings both of them hatred and begrudging. "She can't dance. You know this."

"Will she drop dead?" gripes Jack, half-tempted to stand up now because he can. It's one of the only loves he's ever known, though, the guilt that keeps him sitting at Hector's eye level. 

"She very well could."

"She would die happy."

"The dead can't feel. I think I know, Jack."

"Then I'll dance on her grave for her and pray she finds her happiness in heaven."

"I'm not dead yet," Carina interrupts delicately. When they get to talking on this subject, she finds that she hates both of them. "It's comforting to hear you think I've no chance, though, Father."

"Carina, there's no choosing," he sighs painfully. "The physician predicted you have four months. That's all, treasure. Four months."

"Yes." Desperately now, she rises so her dress won't wrinkle, and she tries to think calm. She tries to consider peace. "YES, but that was eight months ago, Papa. Let me live while I can, please. I could love him."

"Oh, Jesus," Hector swears, genuinely close to weeping.

"I mean it," she insists, turning to Jack in hopes he will help her, the only girl he loves now, live. "I could love him."

"Very well then," Barbossa begrudges after a long pause, pressured by Jack's gaping, pointed state. "If your condition worsens, though --"

"It won't," she swears, standing and quickly making ready, primping and fluffing as she will. "How do I look?"

"Beautiful," he sighs.

"Tempting," wickedly says Jack. "Go seduce poor Henry. Remind him to pay you after. He's always forgetting," he adds, never mind she's already making for the door.

"You've taken him to brothels?" hushes Hector, looking struck. 

"Tried."

"Bookkeeper," he scoffs, turning back to his work. "Bloody where? Nassau?"

"Four months, Hector?"

"I've requested another doc.'s opinion," he clips, short. Like it -- like he's made peace, or pretends to by drinking. "He suspects she ails from spots on her lungs as well as consumption. I was told to prepare meself."

"Spots?"

"Cancerous boils."

"Well, what are his qualifications?" asks Jack. Indignantly, he moseys over to share the couch with him, never mind how Hector glowers. 

"He came from London."

"So?"

"So what, Jack?"

"What of Turner?"

"I'll put an end to it."

"To what? Why's she see him weekly?"

"He's the only man on this island who's agreed to tutor her."

"On what?" Jack laughs. "Wifely duties?"

"I don't know," he huffs, now so perplexed that he's given up on his work. "I was never a learned man, Jack."

"Imagine that."

"How am I to know if their behavior is purely academic?"

"I'm sure Master Henry is most instructive in all manners."

"Just last week, why, they sat at separate sides of the room and read silently until they fell upon interesting passages. Then they read to each other. It's madness." Seeing the bored look on Jack's face, though, he rolls his eyes and crumples all his papers back into a disorderly stack. "What? Not jaunty enough for you?"

"It sounds respectable."

"Not when he reads bleedin' poetry aloud. He speaks too familiar."

"To her?"

"To me," he snaps. 

"Hector," sneers Jack in a fond way. "You think Turner boy is trying to charm you?"

"I don't know his intentions. You know what he says to me when I ask him?"

"'Might I return that wig to the King?'"

"He swears they're only friends. Acquaintances. He swears upon his honor, bah!"

.

"Henry," greets Mister Lane, clasping his arm warmly. Really, Joseph merely tries for discretion in the middle of the ballroom, for he's staring just where Carina disappeared to: the garden. "Who was she?"

"Who?" Henry questions, oblivious and actually one of the most foolish men alive. He's still trying to decide if she was asking him to accompany her outdoors or politely bidding he leave her alone forever. Goodness. 

_We’ve met,_ is all she said to Miss Newbury when the debutante tried to introduce Henry to her, but that inflection, the snub he's sure he's heard. 

"Her," Joseph says. "The woman you were just speaking to. Blue gown, black hair, green eyes?"

"Blue eyes." Nearly green, however, when she laughs on a sunny day.

"Well?" grins Joseph, elbowing Henry like they were schoolboy chums and not each other's first blackened eye. "What's her name?"

"Her name?"

"Yes," he frowns. "The name of the woman you were just speaking to, the woman who only --"

"Aphrodite," interrupts Henry, looking slightly dazed. And pale. And oddly determined -- he's going to find her. "Her name is Aphrodite, Calypso, Venus, and Helen. Guinevere and Juliet," he says so certainly, so contrite as Joseph laughs behind him in a peculiar way, "Viola," he calls over his shoulder as he strides to the curtain, and "Carina," he says next, exhaling the sigh in an elated, relieved tone, "Miss Barbossa."

"Henry."

"We haven't danced yet," he tells her. Confidently, he walks over to her bench and watches her straighten, sees how aware she is of his presence in her anxious hands, her pink flush, her red, red mouth. 

"I'm afraid I don't much feel like dancing."

"After that dance with Martin, I don't blame you," he quips, only grinning when she smiles, when those stars in her eyes glint. Was it Copernicus who is now proven so wrong? There is a sun, and it's her, her for whom Hades wanted to protect and Athena meant to spare: Persephone. She is the goddess of spring and blooms pink roses, but it will be winter soon. 

"Miss Carina," Henry tries, "I can promise I won't step on your toes."

"But if I stepped on yours?"

"Carina," he says. Heaven above, he actually ceases breath when he says it: "How could you? Your feet don't touch the ground."

"Excuse me?"

"Angel," he calls her, so emphatically stressed in the delivery that she draws in her breath so sharply it's disarming. "Carina."

"What are you doing?" she asks him quickly. "Don't -- kneel. Mister Turner," she begs, genuinely and dreadfully sure she'll faint, oh, good Lord. "Henry," she gasps, because here he is kneeling at her feet and gazing up at her like he's never meant it, mere acquaintances, good friends, each kind word he's given her as if he's meant subtext so profound it's a stroll through a garden and a pink rose he presses into her hair. 

"Carina."

"Don't," she tells him, nearly begging. "Stand, or my heart will stop, I swear it."

"Carina," he repeats, so expressionless even as she realizes too late her mistake and has to hear him admit it, "I wasn't going to ask you to marry me."

"Of course," she agrees, breathless now and seizing. Her heart clenches and clenches, and it is pride that keeps her nonchalant. "That would have been most foolish for you."

"Yes?"

"I'd have rejected you."

"Yes?" he asks once more, almost smirking. Really, he's kneeling to avoid the disrespect of looking down at her and the dishonor of sitting by her side. Really, he considered blurting it right then, confessing that though he has nothing but a few coins and his name and his ethic and his heart -- hers, all hers if she wills it -- would she wed him?

"Of course."

"Might I ask why you'd refuse?"

"No, you may not."

"But I'm asking," he says, or rather -- he flusters. "Won't you answer?"

"Answer why I would refuse you, or answer the question?"

"I'm sorry," Henry implores, now rising to the battle of wits, the tension that keeps him awake and has him regretting the remarks he cleverly orchestrates only after she's bested him. "Which question, Carina?"

" _The_ question."

"Beg pardon?"

"Your marriage proposal."

"That question?"

"Yes," she sighs, half-erupting because this is becoming exhausting. The unknowing. "The only question, Henry. _Will you marry me, Henry?_ Goodness, but everyone is searching for their someone."

"Carina," he whispers. Really, this is him standing and deciding to choose: all of the world or her, her and the sky. 

Her next sigh is even more reproachful than seconds prior. "Yes?"

"I will marry you."

Help her, she genuinely gasps, too affronted to feel flattered. "You will not."

"You just asked me to marry you," he protests, far too clever by half and too sweet to directly contradict her. "I accept your proposal."

"I most certainly did not."

"You said, miss, _Will you marry me, Henry?_ Quite simply, I will. I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you, I'm quite sure of it."

"Heavens." _No,_ she thinks. Actually, it's the rest of her life. "You know I didn't mean I meant to marry you. You must know."

"And I never meant to disappoint you," he apologizes gently, looking as if he might reach for her hand. "I should have considered how you would interpret my kneeling here. I'm sorry I upset you."

"Please don't make something of nothing, please."

"I don't believe I am," he says. "I only wanted a dance; however, I suppose I was in want of a wife. Everyone is looking for someone, aye?"

"Much too closely, I think."

"Why would you reject me?" he asks her again, much softer than earlier. There's no hint of teasing, not now that their façade is in shambles, so all that remains here with them in the twilight is honesty. Its accompanying pain. How insecure he seems when he flexes his hands and looks at her -- truly looks at her -- intent enough to evoke parallels of sea creatures and maidens and stars and sin. "Would you refuse me because of my family, miss?"

She mustn't have heard him correctly. "Your family? Why would I object to your family?"

"My mother is of means, but my father is a man of trade. Is his work an obstacle?"

"No," she says thinly.

"Is my work an obstacle? I'm to away soon, you must know."

"Must I?"

"I'm also giving thought to joining the Navy."

"How ambitious. Goodness."

"Carina."

"Henry," she starts, but she is already moving beyond spectrum and lens. She is floating aimlessly through gravity as if purposefully sunken in the transit of continuity, and she is flying, weightless and untethered, hopeful. "You can't mean it."

"Why ever not?"

"I'm sorry," she says, realizing. Distracting. "Away where?"

"School."

"Oh." Broken, mournful _oh,_ she genuinely had no idea. "You're leaving?"

"Yes."

"You're leaving," she repeats, but her inflection wasn't a question. The statement is mournful and nearly stunned: _You’re leaving me,_ but -- "Not for too long, I hope?"

"Honestly?"

"Why not," she bids him. "Crucify me, Judas. Honestly _what_?"

"I might not go."

"Oh, but Henry, you must! I'll hate you if you don't. I would die to attend. I would."

"Then I must postpone it, at least. Miss Carina, I -- I wonder if I might be so bold as to dissemble the pretense we've established."

"Yes?"

"I had hoped to leave you with an understanding tonight, a vague inclination of the matters of the heart."

"Vague?"

"Naturally."

"Indeed." Hera, this is a tightrope. "Whose heart?"

"My heart," he says. "The matters of my heart, and you've brought feelings to it."

"Henry, please stand," she tells him, growing a smidgen anxious. "This very much feels like a proposal, and we _can’t._ "

"Can, miss," he says. Seriousness only succeeds in making him look so intense. His confounded, perfect jawline."

"What of your grandfather?"

"He's pacified," he assures her. "He remains singular in his opinions, however, and remains inconsequential in mine. Though, your father?"

"Utterly hates you, Henry. Truly," she sighs, so sweet and so softly that it's almost a breathless laugh, a _what if?_

"He will oppose?"

"He couldn't. He wishes for my happiness and well-being. Will your parents oppose?"

"They couldn't object to you, Carina. The very thought is unfathomable."

 

.

"Do something impressive," she bids him, and he falters, has chalk smeared upon his sleeves. 

"Are you not impressed by me already?"

"Well."

" _Well?_ " he repeats, laughing a quiet, thoughtful sound of a laugh. "I don't have many talents."

"I'm sure you could consider something," she implores, looking so expectant that he truly has no choice. 

He begins reciting _Macbeth_ from memory at once.

.

"Are.. are you just coming home?" Will asks Henry. Not in a reprimanding manner, just a concerned one. 

He's opened the door this morning just find his son about to enter, but Henry only smiles and touches his da's cheek. "Are you leaving for the shop?"

"You were away all night?"

"Is something wrong, Da'?"

"No," starts Will, caught a bit off-guard. "Are you all right?"

"Are you?"

"Yes. You?"

"I'm fine," says Henry, stepping aside so Will can pass. "Perfect. Tired," he admits, "I'll have a lie-in and meet you for dinner, yes?"

"You'll what?"

"Help Mum manage the estate like I promised her I would yesterday."

"How's Carina?"

"Fine," answers Henry, getting clapped on his shoulder. "She's fine. Perfect. Tired," he betrays, but the door's closed before Will can look back at him.

.

"Don't move," she softly whispers, her blue eyes so wide with trepidation, with softness. "Henry, don't move."

"I won't," he swears, practically gasping it. "I won't."

"Don't," she murmurs, moving so, SO dauntingly slow, "don't move," while he lifts her by the waist just barely, helps her free her skirts enough to move her legs. "Henry."

"Carina."

"I'll lose my courage," she tells him, nearly breathless from the revelry that is being so close to him. Where his shirt is untied over his chest, she's splaying her fingers over his bare chest. "If you move, I'll lose my courage."

"So take mine."

"Don't move," she warns, so, _so_ slowly pressing her leg over him, inhaling deeply as she does. She doesn't still until she's ontop of him, straddling his hips as best as her gown allows. It's the rest of her poignant, breathy courage to murmur, "Is this all right?" while he remains so painfully still that she's burning his flesh. 

"Carina."

"I just want to know," she says, almost inaudible. "Is this what it would be like?"

"What would it be like?"

"I don't know," she mumbles, nearly collapsing. The intimacy here is making her weak, the tenderness in how he holds her, views her. "I imagine satisfying."

"Relentless," he agrees, burning red. All of his blood, it's pulsing in his veins, rigorous in his chest. Against her hand, his heart dies and is made whole again. 

"Would it be done like this?"

"Would?" he gasps, inhaling so deeply that she feels it, she _feels._ "Carina."

"Don't laugh at me, please."

"Carina, sweetheart, no, no," he whispers, pressing his thumbs against the seam of her waist. "I'm not. Just so we're together, you mean intimacy, don't you? As it would be when -- when we are wed."

Honestly, the way that she says _yes_ has him closing his eyes for a moment. He doesn't know that last night, she had vomited enough blood to convince herself she'd be dead come morning, and he doesn't know that she fleetingly wished she wouldn't die a virgin, but reality is more sacred than past minutes of hope and fear. 

He tries to think tactically, and he tries to not imagine what that sacred intimacy would be like between them. He thinks there's no intimacy greater than the way she speaks her wishes and fears and truths to him, than the way she looks at him, and he holds onto that whisper of earnestness. He holds onto her more tightly. 

"Henry, I can't ask again. I'll die."

"Don't," he urges. "Or take my small courage, and I'll bear your embarrassment, Carina. There's no need for you to feel so, not with me. Carina," he says. With something untenable, his tone deepens, gone thick. "Don't move."

"I'm not."

"Be still," he whispers, though she starts to tremble in his hands when he sits up and brings their bodies so tantalizingly close. 

When he gently presses her backwards, follows her down to the grass, and uses his leg to help hers bend and intuitively part, she says his name a breath too quickly, bites her nails harshly into his ribs.

"Don't move," he warns her, for he's holding himself above her, untouching. The eye contact alone is enough to dismantle him, that wide-eyed, cautious stare that's blinding him to reason. "Is this all right?"

"Yes, though you aren't touching me."

"No, I won't compromise your honor, love, even though I can nearly taste it." 

"Tell me."

"Desire." And finally, finally, after moments of gazing at each other, he lets the _what if_ rest as he rises above her, standing. "Do you want to walk a bit more?"

"Henry," she sighs. She's still rather just lying there, and it's almost hilarious how their lives won't change even after she's dead. Will he take any consolation in the fact that he'll be able to stand over her grave like he stands over her now? Unlikely. "Dear."

He takes both of her hands when she raises them up. And when she's standing, he wraps his arms around her closely, exhales a kiss to the top of her head because he's utterly exhausted by love. "I meant it. When we are wed. I'm going to marry you sometime."

"Give me a good hour's proper warning beforehand, Henry."

"I'll try."

"If there's no time to have a wedding gown made, I know which dress I'll wear," she says lightly, so impossibly serious. For his benefit, she adds, "It's pink," and presses herself more closely to him. "We'll be very happy, won't we?"

"Yes," he agrees, in much the same way she's said the word earlier. Almost as if he were swearing he will. 

"We can sail away that night on a ship and find each corner of the world," she says. "Far from here." The more tightly she grasps his shirt, the harder she hopes. If she were to close her eyes and count to three, breathe twice, and then see again, there would still be his fingers in her hair and her nose against his collarbones. 

They would just be married, and they'd sail away, yearn for eternity, and navigate by the stars to always return home, to prove souls are just star bodies transposed of constellations and melodies and memories: him, dying and delirious; her, reaching out to him and begging him please, _please live._

_If not, you'll wish you had._

"We can do that now," he tells her. He reaches down for her wrap, but instead of placing it around her shoulders, he drapes it over his arm. Her fingers are so warm when he takes her hand. "I'll follow you anywhere, Carina."

"Not anywhere," she corrects. "Only the good, happy places, the new beginnings and perfect endings, right? That's where you'll be."

"Anywhere you are, dear."

It's the most she can mean without telling him the truth, that no matter how earnestly she hopes, she bleeds and faints and fevers.

She dies, and he can't follow her in death. He's too good for it, too bright, and his is a light that the world needs, she won't say. She won't say that they'll never fulfill these moments they create for themselves, the one he hopefully interprets as promises she'll keep over her dead body, yet she can't apologize for hurting him, either -- it's a fine, fine line she's holding onto. 

So instead, with the midnight wind in her hair, she walks with him to the shore and says: "This is what I wish to remember. Here is where I want to be able to find you, Henry. Here, love, I'll be waiting," as the tide kisses upon the shore and caresses its way towards the small sanctuary that is a dark, starry night. 

"We'll sail away in a ship," he promises her. Dreamily, he sighs a kiss into her hairline. "Under the cover of darkness. When the sun rises, sweetheart, we'll be far, far away, and better for it."

.

"For the love of everything good in this world," Barbossa says, stomping with each heavy step he takes onto the padded flood of his immaculate parlor, "leave right now, boy."

"Respectfully," Henry winces, "no."

"I beg your confounded pardon?"

"I'm here for the position."

"You're here to vex me, Turner. You're greying my wig prematurely. You're crippling my other leg."

"Please," begs Henry, rather regretting his hapless smile soon as it dimples his face. "I believe this will me mutually beneficial."

"Don't remove that satchel. Keep your coat on, as well. Put it back on! You aren't stayin', Mister Turner. I'll thank you to leave my house," he whispers, harsh. 

_("She doesn't want to see you. She's demanded you leave her.")_

Straightening his sleeve quite casually, oblivious, Henry asks, "May I sit? Would you mind?"

"Nary a little."

"Thank you," Henry outright _grins,_ trying to catch the man's eye as he looks about in all directions. "Have you any questions prepared, or should I begin with my qualifications?" 

"The latter. I'm sure they're limited."

"Oh, dear. You have been searching for a tutor for Miss Barbossa. One who wouldn't mind educating a young lady, correct?"

_("I'm sure if you would tell her that I was here, she'd --"_

_"Repeat everything I'm telling you now, Turner."_

_"No, sir, I don't believe she would.")_

"I dare say not."

"Sir, please, I had an expensive education. I'm quite capable."

"Your mother taught you."

"Some, and her education was costly, too. I'm well-versed in the Romance languages, can recite --"

"Jesus," Barbossa swears. In the heat of this summer, he had to dab away the sweat of his brow. He's still looking furtively around, too, like he's waiting for something.

"-- arithmetic, advanced enough to cover Pythagorean teachings," Henry continues somewhat awkwardly. "Chemical knowledge of the known elements, history, beginning with the uncivilized periods of the nomadic peoples until the most recent coronation of the King, anthropology --"

"Have you your own fossils?" 

"I'm afraid not."

"Proceed."

"Astronomy," continues Henry, apologetically. "I'm sorry, is this an inconvenient time?"

"Hmm?"

_("Do you intend to quiet her remaining will to live, sir?"_

_"Sir, I must insist you leave my property."_

_"Not without seeing her, sir, to ensure her well-being."_

_"Her well-being? Her bloody well-being? She's exhausted! Over-excited! Weak and frail and failing, boy, because you haven't enough care to see she remains healthy."_

_"Her choices are her own, sir."_

_"She isn't taking visitors, Henry.")_

"Every few seconds, you look towards that door. If now's truly bad timing, I don't want to distract you from your day."

"Fine, fine," Barbossa sighs, setting a hand on his left knee. It hurts, he finds, when his daughter's irritable. It's like the damned weather. "Continue."

"Astronomy, anatomy," Henry recites obediently. Just, Barbossa's lost all pretense of paying attention to him, so he's laughing this chuckling sort of grimace. "Er, mythology and religion, separate and as they've appeared in literature, please; I'm sure that anything she wishes to know, I could assist with. Carpentry? Crochet. Birdwatching. Artillery. Sir?"

"Mister Turner," he drawls, distracted.

"At least, I have access to the scholar's library," he tries, now more than a tad desperate. "I can bring her the books she's been denied access to. I only wish for time, sir. Her friendship. And since we share the same interests --"

"I've already hired someone," Barbossa interrupts gruffly, turning around once more.

Henry's face instantly falls. "Oh. Grand."

"No, no, it's not. Does it seem quiet?"

"Beg pardon?"

"It's too quiet," Hector fiercely whispers, leaning towards Henry now. "Are you not in agreement?"

Goodness, this is, like, Henry's chance to bond with the man. "I don't know," he whispers back in conspiracy. "That is, I've never been inside your home during the -- the day."

Barbossa squints. 

"That is, the once I was here as a boy, you'll remember. I'm sure," he swallows, smiling a bit too much like Will. 

"I'm sure."

"Upon my honor."

_("She's chosen heaven's small earthly comforts, sir: hope, love, peace, and purpose. Would you not even let me give her these flowers?"_

_"So the pollen can snuff out the life of her lungs?"_

_"Mister Barbossa, please. I must see her."_

_"If you do, you'll have to consent to never seeing her again. Each exertion kills her, Henry, she's dying!"_

_"I will not consent to such an agreement, sir."_

_"You'll do as you're instructed, boy."_

_"Papa," bids Carina from the door. "Please. Please, he's my husband.")_

"My left leg upon your honor. The tutor's been in that room there with her for near four hours now. There's been complete silence since they were acquainted. I don't know what tha' means."

"Perhaps," Henry hushes, watching him vex himself, "you could walk in there and see how the studies are progressing."

"She forbade me from interfering."

"Yes, she's rather bossy," he says.

Hector nods his assent before he remembers himself. "Watch your tongue, Henry. She's perfection."

He holds both his hands up in surrender, going wide-eyed. "Of course. I know that, sir."

"No, you don't."

"I'm trying," Henry whispers, "to become better aquatinted with Miss Carina. Should I step in that room and report my discoveries?"

"Absolutely not," Hector sniffs. "Go ahead."

"Pardon me," Henry calls as he opens the door to the Barbossa library. "Don't mind me, I'm just borrowing a book."

"Mister Turner," starts Carina.

One quick look, and Henry stifles his smile by thinning his lips and biting his teeth. She's lovely in pale gray today, but thank goodness, the powder from the chalk won't show as markedly as it normally would. For, she's written out the English alphabet on the board for what appears to be dozens of times -- a perfect copy of the example made for her by her new tutor, an aging, pinch-faced man who stares at Henry in the way all of his school teachers used to. 

It's all at once unnerving and irritating. "Well," says Henry, perplexedly invested now. "Fine afternoon, isn't it?"

"An exhausted one," Carina answers, turning back to her board. Aside from the scritch her letters leave, there's shocking silence. 

"The female constitution is weak," her tutor states, despairingly. "The distress of expanding their minds is tiring business."

"Sure," replies Henry. Across the room, he watches her shoulders stiffen, her head tilt, and her resolve triumph. "Best to begin with the basics, I suppose; are numbers next?"

"Pronunciation. Have you heard Mister Barbossa speak? This girl needs to properly learn the King's English."

"And then the all complex question of _What is a vowel,_ I'm sure. She'll learn to bear gentile inflection upon the correct words of the feminine vocabulary."

"Precisely."

"I'm sorry, Mister?"

"Borough," the old codge says. "I've come from London."

"How prestigious."

"Thank you," he surmises, and across the room, Carina quietly breaks the chalk in half.

"You meant to borrow a book," she says. Like during the first time they met formally as adults, less an introduction, more an interrogation.

"Yes, I'd nearly forgotten."

"Which title?"

"Oh, a collection," he makes up, half-tempted to simply not move out of her way she crosses the room for the ladder. What would have been the slightest brush of their arms together would have been a poor flesh _hello,_ but it would still be water. "Grecian plays."

"Of course."

"You know me," he murmurs, looking around.

"Not that well. The English or Greek translations?"

"Greek. Thank you," he tells her genuinely when she manages to find the book. He looks to Mister Borough for the revelation that Carina can read and discern English from Greek, but he stares fixedly at his pocket watch. 

"Cassandra," Mister Borough calls her. "Eight more copies of the alphabet today. Hurry now."

She takes her time, though, returning the book to Henry. When their fingers almost meet across the spine, she stares at the way his eyes gleam and smile and _hates_ him for this, for how it nearly has her grinning, too. "Enjoy the volume. It's one of my favorites."

"Then it will be mine, as well," he tells her, genuinely becoming brighter, he thinks, just by being near her. "In fact, I've brought books for you. They're just in there with your father, shall we?"

"Goodness, please," she whispers, and no less than six minutes later, Hector's sent Borough away.

"I was going to persevere," she insists over tea, straightening up and simpering for the vital stand in femininity she's been denied on sole account of being a woman. "I was going to ask him the origin of a word and correct him by speaking Latin. You'd have been impressed."

"I already am."

.

"The fallibility of man," she sighs. "Mortality, Henry. The complexities of humankind are killing me slowly and cutting me into disparate pieces."

"Carina," he tries, because on the edge of this pier, his darling girl looks like she's wound so tightly that she could fly up and jump off the wood into the sea. "Miss, if you wish to discuss why you're so distressed this evening, I'll gladly listen."

"Have you ever kissed a girl, Henry?"

He actually is shocked into sputtering. "Beg pardon? Miss Barbossa, how -- how untoward. My word!"

"Henry, please, don't be my suitor just now. Please be my friend. Be that boy I once tired to teach to read. Be the boy I would have saved from drowning, from the fever, and _save me,_ Henry. Please. _Please._ I can hardly hear the ocean, heaven is calling so loudly."

"Carina, you feel like fire," he gasps, spreading her collar away from her neck. "You're overheated. I think you're seeing things, love. You need help."

"Wait," she bids him. This fragment is only an excerpt from the center of their story, but already, it is the end. "I only need to breathe."

"Are you unwell?"

"I've never felt more perfect," she admits in whole honesty, breathless, dazed, whispering. "I feel like I am fire, Henry. I feel --"

Influenza. 

Her susceptibility to illness marked the first epitaph in her headstone.

Her recovery, though, is so rapid that hope grows and blossoms and blooms into a sunny, green-leaved park in which Henry kisses her for the first time. He won't understand yet, but by dying, she was saving his life.

.

"I'm going to tell you the story about a man who lived and died. A man who held golden treasure in his hand and forever knew cold and pain and hunger, Carina. A man who didn't live, then, until he knew your mother and you."

"Papa," she cries, because it is her sixth birthday, and he is sailing away. Because she is nine and first coughed blood so raggedly that her throat feels splintered. Because she is sixteen, beautiful, brilliant, invincible sixteen and _in love_ with Shakespeare and Achilles and Persephone and David. Because she won't live to see herself married with babies and wisened gray hair and seems to already know it: the pain that is a temporary life and brief moments of collision and impact and meaning so profound that she cries just to think of the many happinesses that have touched her existence and brushed softly against those she loves. 

"Papa," she cries, because the fever is so breathtaking that the lights she sees have lifted him from grace to her grave; she is being lifted and sees her eternity beckon like a hand that holds an olive branch and ambrosia. Because she is expectant, she feels no pain but the heartbreaking look in his eyes. 

"I'm going to tell you the story of a man who knew no greater happiness in his life than you, treasure. Carina, my dear."

"Please send for Uncle Jack, papa. Please, please, bring me Henry. I don't think to live much longer."

"Carina," he pleads, cursing, condemning, crying. He holds her warm, limp hand, and feels he shall die, too, when she so weakly murmurs _thank you._

"I will be a star in the sky," she tells him, peaceful. "I will wait," she says, nonsensical and in delirium, but she's fallen asleep before he can ask her what she's meant. What she's always meant -- what if she had more time?

.

"I love you," Henry said, but his darling girl, her lips red and bloody, "dear," he wept.

She was already dead.


End file.
